libertarian municipalism

Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

June 17, 2019June 17, 2019

by Addison Winslow

Juchitán is a very windy place. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere so windy. Up in the city of Oaxaca, people said it would be hot—“un chingo de calor”—but the pummeling winds at times make it almost frigid. Sounds like it does this pretty much all year round, in the whole Isthmus region.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is the thinnest point between oceans in Mexico, stretching roughly from Coatzacoalcos in the state of Veracruz, to Salina Cruz, just south of here. It’s probably the least imaginary line between North and Central America, on account of the abrupt break in the mountains (the chain that runs up the whole country, blending further on into the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas), which reemerge again if we proceed south into Chiapas.

There are other remarkable features: the urban centers on the Isthmus are some of the only ones in North America which are majority Indigenous, zapotecos. Some local guys also speak of how the Isthmus is known to have the most beautiful women in Mexico. But if you’ve heard of the area, it’s more likely for the earthquakes last year. I talk to people everywhere who lost their home, or maybe only half of it. The municipal palace of Juchitán collapsed; so did the old colonial market. In the long past year people have been focused more on rebuilding their own places of refuge, and the market plaza persists as an improvised labyrinth of tarps and narrow, crowded pathways between butchers, fruit stands, and taquerías.

My companions and I are staying in what used to be a restaurant; it is now a meeting place and the home of two organizers, some cats, and a near-hairless Xoloscuintle dog. There’s a pile of cots for visitors like us. While we were lounging around one morning, a small group came in to have a meeting. It went on for about five hours, in which time we read some, napped, and didn’t eavesdrop as much as we should have. Finally, one of the live-in organizers came to invite us to introduce ourselves and explain Symbiosis, the group I was representing and asking them to join, now that they’d wrapped up the agenda.

Before we began, one of the organizers filled us in on their struggle. They’re coordinators from a group called the Assembly of the Pueblos of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory(APIIDTT). It’s part of a network of local assemblies in the area, whose existence predates the earthquake. Their collective activities include a refusal to pay electric bills, and resistance to megaprojects planned for the region. But the assemblies have greater ambitions, and at least one has become a veritable government outside the government. “We try and organize collectively to take care of our issues, but in a horizontal manner,” the organizer tells us.

***

Mexico has a fierce revolutionary tradition, co-opted without pretense by the ‘Institutional Revolutionary Party’ (PRI) which controlled government from the end of the revolutionary period in 1929 until the year 2000, when the viceroy of the Coca-Cola empire in Mexico, Vicente Fox, and his rightwing National Action Party (PAN), came to power. The appellate ‘PRIAN’ was given to the fluid collaboration of the two dominant parties—however it was under Fox’s administration that documents were released detailing the ‘Dirty War,’ a coordinated terror campaign in the 1960s and ’70s that had suppressed leftist activism and paved the way for the full force of neoliberalism to come.

As it tends to, the left survived those trying times, in a couple recognizable forms. The first is what we can call the ‘partyist left,’ la izquierda partidista. After blatant electoral fraud in 1988, the losing insurgent candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas created the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), along with Andrés Manuel López Obrador (then still a ladder-climbing apparatchik) among others. The PRD ultimately operated much like other parties, so that even AMLO, after two presidential runs of his own and more high-profile battles over election fraud, left to create a new party in 2012, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). In the July 2018 elections, MORENA won the presidency (in AMLO) as well as majorities in both houses of the legislature, and ran competitively for nearly every state governorship, winning four in the south of the country. Many analyses have been written of what this victory represents.

“There’s always been a ‘left’ in Mexico,” I was told: “In the way of life of the people, from below, where it hasn’t been undone.”

But here we are concerned with the other left. “There’s always been a ‘left’ in Mexico,” I was told: “In the way of life of the people, from below, where it hasn’t been undone.” Two manifestations of this should be mentioned, both with roots threading back to the Mexican Revolution and the influence of the peasant uprisings associated with the name Zapata.

One goes by the slogan usos y costumbres, which means that the traditions of indigenous peoples entitle them to a peculiar style of local governance, which tends to be a council of elders, assembly decision-making, or a mixture of both. The other came out of revolutionary land reforms, which divided many vast private landholdings into communal farms called ejidos. Constitutionally, the highest authority of the ejidos is the general assembly, which ordinarily convenes every six months, but can also be called on other occasions by an initiative supported by twenty percent of the members.

The ejidos were inalienable, off the market, until that proved incompatible with NAFTA and had to be done away with. Perfectly compatible with NAFTA, of course, were the billions of dollars of agricultural subsidies the US and Canadian governments use to undervalue the primary commodities produced by the majority of the world’s population. The result of the legal vulnerability of the ejidos combined with the economic clout of North American industrial agriculture was the upending of rural society in Mexico, rapid urban proletarianization, and one of the largest migrations in human history over Mexico’s northern border to the United States.

In the decade or two before NAFTA, though, some staunch Maoist guerrilla sorts had formed clandestine organizations, and some of them took their activity into the Lacandon jungle. Here on the forgotten periphery of the continent, they met the local people, and together watched as the swirl of the capitalist world prepared to suck them in. In the meantime, many of them busied themselves preparing, with some rifles, to make themselves heard.

The Zapatista uprising reignited hope against capitalism worldwide, not least in Mexico. In 1996, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made the call for a gathering of indigenous peoples which resulted in the creation of the National Indigenous Congress, around and through which emerged what we might call the ‘movements for radical democracy.’ Speaking broadly, this is what makes up the ‘other’ left in Mexico.

***

One of the people in the meeting in Juchitán, the mother of our friend who lives here, is a delegate to the National Indigenous Congress. Each of the local assemblies has one. The original impetus for the formation of many of these assemblies on the Isthmus was to coordinate the collective refusal to pay power bills, insisting that electricity is a human right. The assemblies consisted of the people involved in the strike. One of them has gone ten years now without paying, and the government apparently hasn’t cut them off. In January 2019, the assemblies, all together, will enter negotiations with the federal government for the first time. This was the subject of their meeting.

By contrast: I myself come from Chico, California—the valley city that absorbed most of the refugees from the fiery apocalypse of Paradise, CA this past November, which was caused by the negligence of our local (private) electric monopoly. While the fire was still burning, the governor declared power companies immune to lawsuits for the damages of infernos they provoke. I was listening closely.

Meanwhile, at least in some cases the purview of the assemblies on the Isthmus has expanded far beyond being a utilities union. In one town, Álvaro Obregón, the community assembly has a majority of the town’s support, and something approaching administrative independence, except that public money still passes through the hands of the ‘official’ municipal government, which also has the power to approve infrastructure megaprojects. The people of Álvaro Obregón recently formed a community police force in response to threats from paramilitary groups; the county police will hang out at the entrance to the town, but don’t really enter.

***

The focus on electricity returns us to how windy it is. With foreign investment related to the carbon credit scheme created by the Kyoto Protocol, the Isthmus has been the site of the construction of massive wind turbines. One of a series of megaprojects planned for southern Mexico is a new string of turbines along an extensive sandbank closing in the lagoon just south of here. It would be the largest wind energy project in Latin America. By one account, it was only the moment when the company arrived, bringing barely any machinery (yet), and closed off the entrance to the sandbank with armed guards, that people noticed there was something menacing about their intentions.

Initially, it was difficult for my companions and me to understand this resistance to clean energy.

Initially, it was difficult for my companions and me to understand this resistance to clean energy. But it scares away the fish which the people along the coast live off of. In a documentary we were shown, people speak of the sea as their mother. The Isthmus is also a narrow and important passage point for migratory birds, which are, with appalling frequency, being knocked dead by the sweeping turbine blades. The locals see it as a matter of dispossession and territorial integrity—and, as a matter of fact, with the construction of these turbines, electrical bills have increased.

After listening awhile, we explained Symbiosis. It was almost awkward—after their descriptions of their situation, principles, and intentions, it felt like we were parroting them. But such are the convergences, and this is grounds for unity. Most of those present expressed enthusiastic interest in our work, and we agreed to talk further. Several of them will be in Chiapas soon, and we’ll reconnect there.

***

We came to Juchitán on the recommendation of an elder of the movements in Mexico, Gustavo Esteva. Esteva was at one time a CEO, then a Trotskyist, later an adviser to the Zapatista army in their negotiations with the federal government, and now is a ‘deprofessionalized intellectual’ settled in the city of Oaxaca and serving a critical advisory role to the assembly of La Universidad de la Tierra, or Unitierra.

Before everyone split for the holidays, Esteva had had us around for one final conversation at Unitierra, at a small table tucked beneath shelves of political economy texts. He took us through a lengthy story—really, a comprehensive theoretical construction which would properly make its own essay. As with the assemblies he then sent us to investigate, it seemed from his telling that Unitierra and Symbiosis have converged upon the same practical conclusions, and it seems we’ll be counting each other as partners in our respective endeavors. They call their project Crianza Mutua, which doesn’t exactly have an English translation.

In light of the rest of what Esteva shared with us, I’ll turn back to the story of the Zapatistas. The EZLN has, for decades now, called for cross-border collaboration in the resistance to global capitalism, convening gatherings on the national, continental, global, and even intergalactic levels. In the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (2005), they declared themselves dedicated to working with all dispossessed peoples; that Cuba and Ecuador would just have to let them know where to send the solidarity corn and crafts. Simultaneously, they were keen never to mark themselves as a separatist movement. The rallying cry was ¡Nunca más un México sin nosotros! The national liberation was for Mexico, but only a more inclusive Mexico.

At a gathering about a year ago, Esteva told us, someone speaking on behalf of the Mixe people said that they don’t consider themselves part of the ‘original peoples,’ or part of Mexico at all. On the tail end of their word came one from the Zapatistas; they had been considering the same thing: ¡Nosotros sin México! Since 1994, they had always flown the Mexican flag in their events and tours; apparently no one had noticed that for several years now they’ve ceased to do so. The world is undergoing changes, and so are the movements. In 2017, out of the National Indigenous Congress was formed the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), with the initial goal of selecting a spokeswoman to run as an independent presidential candidate and bring attention to their issues and beliefs. The elections this year, of course, went the way of the partyist left, and the CIG were outside as critics.

But in August of this year, the CIG met to assess the just-ended campaign and discuss what happens next. It was there that the EZLN, following a presentation of an analysis of the world, put forward several proposals, which will be further discussed at the international gathering in Chiapas at the end of this month and year. For a taste, here are three of them:

…we propose to double down on the work of the CIG Support Networks in order to open our collective heart to all of the rebellions and resistances that emerge and persevere wherever we might be, in the countryside or the city, without regard for borders…

…to begin or continue the struggle to grow both the demands and dimensions of the Indigenous Governing Council, with the goal of extending it beyond original peoples to include workers of the countryside and city and all of those who have been discarded or marginalized…

…to begin or continue the analysis and discussion toward the creation of a Coordination or Federation of Networks which avoids any kind of centralized or vertical command and which spares no effort in building solidarity, support, and sisterhood/brotherhood among those who form it…

There’s not really much of a coincidence. In common between Symbiosis in North America and the resistance in Mexico sit the Kurds, resounding out of Rojava. In every location I’ve mentioned, people made reference to them as an inspiration for the scale-up of organizing in the works, generally agreed to be the next step forward. What we are part of is a global movement emerging, and, with due humility, we should be stoked.

Though we can all feel equal under the long curve of ecological collapse, in North America we have a difficult assessment to make regarding our responsibility with our neighbors not far to the south.

At the same time, though we can all feel equal under the long curve of ecological collapse, in North America we have a difficult assessment to make regarding our responsibility with our neighbors not far to the south. I contend that the most predictable form a reactionary municipalism could take is a passive reproduction of the economic inequalities embedded over centuries in the land and labor-power of nations. It’s also perhaps the most innocuous form of hierarchy, because we can content ourselves as having addressed the concerns of everyone in the room, and still discount the majority of the world’s population.

We have a contradiction to reconcile in the twofold objectives of Symbiosis. While on the one hand, dual power is concerned with building autonomous, local capacity in the struggle, we’re engaged in Symbiosis with the rapid upscaling of the resistance for a world system change. Without venturing to envision exactly what conditions will be required for confederal unity, I’ll continue the tradition of recommending we all read “The Tyranny of Structureless” another five times, but also provide for our collective memory an anecdote from what I believe to be the most ambitious international confederation up until now.

The World Trade Organization operates [operated] on consensus, with each member country having equal say. As preferred in the neoliberal order, the coercion and hierarchy are in the details. It was the poor countries who made the call for clear and determined structure, having been shut out of expensive and impromptu proceedings among the tight clubs of wealthy countries. In 2003, a meeting in Cancún was cut short by a walkout protest after a shystie manipulation of the preliminary draft of an agreement. As the rules had it, it would require consensus to remove points put in by the wealthy countries, though not to insert them in the first place.

We can tear down borders in our declarations yet have them reemerge in proceedings, out of the persistent asymmetry of material resources.

In the spirit of solidarity, we can outdo the mutual suspicion that plagues the international relations of nation-states. But we shouldn’t assume it will be so easy. We can tear down borders in our declarations yet have them reemerge in proceedings, out of the persistent asymmetry of material resources. We will have to find ways to structure equality over what the market provides for us.

Speaking of structures and proceedings, I will close with an official pronouncement of the hereby improvised Intercontinental United Antinationalist Resistance Working Group, which currently consists of my companion and me (you’re all welcome to join), declaring our firm resolve:

to investigate the tastes and ambitions of the CIG and their Support Networks in regard to an intercontinental organization of resistance and rebellion;
to suggest to whoever shows up next week in Chiapas that we all do it together;
to develop, in conversation with those who are down, a compatible, if not equivalent proposal for the structure of the Symbiosis confederation as that which emerges from the expansion of the CIG.

We’ll also be thinking of some more pointed projects which can bring together and mutually benefit the movements on all sides of the continent, and would very much like to hear suggestions. Actually, if anyone wanted to discuss, on any level, all of this that is going on, my companion and I would be very pleased to have support and input.

It is our task to see that borders are not only torn down at the start, in documents, but that we continue tearing them down all through the process until all the fences, and walls, and lines in the sand are wiped away with them.

Addison Winslow is a member of Symbiosis and currently lives in Chico, California.

Why libertarian municipalism is more needed today than ever before

November 25, 2018March 12, 2021

People’s assembly in Barcelona, Spain. Photo: Jisakiel

by Tizz Bee

We are entering dire times. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released their 2018 report that has only reassured what many of us know is true. We need to take immediate decisive action on climate change or face a dismal future of increasingly powerful natural disasters, economic instability and reactionary violence.

According to the report, we have 12 years to stop inalterable climate change and that is going to require massive global infrastructure projects aimed at transforming our archaic fossil fuel system to one rooted in sustainable development and ecological understanding. Such a project will clearly be one of the largest developmental efforts in human history and will require global collaboration on a scale never seen before.

Yet, in the face of almost certain annihilation, the transnational ruling class are in a desperate struggle to maintain and profit from the ruin and disaster of their own system. For progress to occur, we need to build a mass movement of millions across the world united behind a call for a new system. And, threatened by new despotic right wing authoritarian regimes worldwide, we need to scale up fast!

According to Abdullah Öcalan, we can understand almost all of today’s crises to be crises of democracy. While the ideal of democracy was used to legitimize imperialist interventions across the developing world since the 1950s, it was never a lived reality even in the West. Instead we were sold shallow representative republicanism in place of real face-to-face direct democracy where individuals have actual power over society.

Representative ‘democracy’ ultimately turns people from empowered citizens to alienated constituents. It turns democracy—a lived, empowering and involved process—into a spectacle of rooting for one’s chosen team. And so it lends itself to oligarchy and, ultimately, dictatorship and imperialist expansion.

In fact, since the end of the Second World War we have witnessed a massive decline of civic engagement, with far lower in-person participation in community associations, clubs and groups of all kinds. Not to mention a decline in wages and an increase in inequality—both in the West and internationally. As society and political structures have been increasingly centralized in the hands of a wealthy few, they have also closed people off from access to power.

A politics of empowerment

Libertarian municipalists argue for a reinvigoration of the civic and political sphere. In place of representative forms of democracy they argue for an inclusive participatory system where every community member has equal power over the matters of governance that impacts them.

Libertarian municipalism is a politics of empowerment. It recognizes democracy as an almost universal value. It begs the question, will we as a society finally embrace actual democracy or accept dictatorship? Libertarian municipalists absolutely reject the representative republicanism that has been peddled to us as “democracy”, a form of government that, in practice, is only a democracy for the rich.

At the core of the libertarian municipalist strategy for change is the creation of the popular assembly and its eventual empowerment as a dual power. Dual power is a situation where two powers coexist with each other and compete for legitimacy.

Libertarian municipalists seek to either create extra-parliamentary assemblies that increasingly gain governing power from local governments or seek to change city charters to legally empower popular assemblies as the primary policy making bodies over representative and hierarchical structures such as mayors and city councils. They envision the municipalization of the economy, where productive assets are held by the community collectively. They strive to build a global network of communities, neighborhoods and cities interlinked through confederal bonds. According to Murray Bookchin,

In libertarian municipalism, dual power is meant to be a strategy for creating precisely those libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies that would oppose and replace the State. It intends to create a situation in which the two powers—the municipal confederations and the nation-state—cannot coexist, and one must sooner or later displace the other.

The popular assembly thus acts as a place that gives any individual in a community direct access to power, shaping policy and the world around them. This is in direct conflict with the hierarchical nation-state and transnational capitalist firms which seek to control the labor, land and resources of communities across the world.

In Minneapolis, protestors demand the city defend Muslims, accept immigrants, welcome refugees, and support workers. Photo: Fibonacci Blue

Cities and towns at the forefront

Today the tensions between cities and state entities couldn’t be more pronounced. The sanctuary city movement provides a stark example of the way cities across the country are already moving towards increased local autonomy and sovereignty over the federal government. Sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans are just a few of the over 39 cities across the US who have joined forces to limit collaboration with federal authorities. According to Vojislava Filipcevic Cordes,

Sanctuary cities in the U.S. represent a feat against the hostile state and “provide a territorial legal entity at a different scale at which sovereignty is articulated” [18]. Sanctuary cities exemplify what Lippert has termed “sovereignty ‘from below’” [19] (p. 547) and are shaped by local legal and political contexts and the solidarity with social movements.

In the wake of an increasingly illegitimate federal government, urban areas take leadership on issues ranging from immigration to raising minimum wages, even if it is in direct conflict with the federal government. Along with this trend, we see growing political divides between urban and rural communities. After the 2018 election, Republicans lost their last congressional urban district in the country.

As the cultural and political divide between rural and urban, local and federal become more pronounced in an era of increasing authoritarianism, it seems that the revolutionary alternatives provided by libertarian municipalism could have the wide appeal and potential support of millions of Americans needed to create political change. But what will that mass movement look like? How can we build the power to force politicians to stop pandering to the fossil fuel industry and the fascist right, and bring about real change?

The left must rebuild political life

Bookchin was one of the key theorists behind libertarian municipalism. In his essay, “Thoughts on Libertarian Municipalism“, he put forward a strategic vision for this kind of movement that we can still learn from today. He begins by describing libertarian municipalism as “ a confrontational form of face-to-face democratic, anti statist politics…that is decidedly concerned with the all-important question of power, and it poses the questions: Where shall power exist? By what part of society shall it be exercised?”.

For Bookchin, the decline of civic and political life is of paramount concern. With its decline, Bookchin sees a vacuum forming in mainstream political discourse where leftist positions have increasingly degraded and shrunk into insular and subcultural discourses while broader society continues to be trapped in an Overton window swiftly moving towards the right.

Bookchin felt it was essential that the left find ways of reaching the broader society with its ideals. He envisioned the institutionalization of popular assemblies not only as an end but as a means. Assemblies would work to level the playing field for the left by giving it a place to both voice its vision for a new world to the public and to reinvigorate a american political life through the popularization of civic ethics rooted in valuing democracy, ecology, and social justice.

Bookchin was interested in the whole revolutionary pie, not just crumbs. As such, libertarian municipalism is a political framework that intentionally engages with that essential political question of: who has power and how should it be wielded? It is a politic that centers the conflict over who has power in society and mobilizes for popular control over existing institutions. As such, Bookchin went to great lengths to distinguish the libertarian municipalist organizing philosophy from other tendencies. He describes one tendency which is often confused with libertarian municipalism, sometimes called communitarianism:

“Communitarianism is defined by movements and ideologies that seek to transform society by creating so-called alternative economic and living situations such as food cooperatives, health centers, schools, printing workshops, community centers, neighborhood farms, “squats,” unconventional lifestyles, and the like”

While such efforts may benefit the people they directly work to serve, they often rely on donations or self funding by their organizers and only serve small numbers of people. The amount and time required to maintain these programs often leads to burnout and massive resource sucks. They inevitably compete with existing social services or capitalist enterprises, leading many to eventual collapse.

While some argue that such programs are necessary to “attune” people to participation in democratic assemblies, or to gain their interest, Bookchin argues that people by and large are already ready for direct democracy, all that is missing is the incentive of such institutions offering people real power over their daily lives.

Legitimacy crisis

As states across the world abandon the enlightenment values of liberal humanism, they only rely on the principle of might as a right, cult of personalities, and populist white supremacy.

Some argue that the rise of the right across the world means that we have to reassert the power of the state—and build up those services it has started to abandon. However, the legitimacy crisis of the state in this country is not the result of it providing less services—it is the result of the complete denigration of moral authority invested in the halls of government. As states across the world abandon the enlightenment values of liberal humanism, they only rely on the principle of might as a right, cult of personalities, and populist white supremacy. As such, we must diligently develop popular assemblies and organizations, training people in the art of civic engagement and duty. We need to put our arguments forward and we need to create space for other people to do the same. We need to advance our ethics. To acquire actual power is an utmost priority in our increasingly authoritarian and hierarchical society that denies us it. The goal of libertarian municipalism is thus total community control over an entire municipality.

By focusing on gaining popular control of the instruments, resources, and institutions currently wielded by the ruling class or local economic elites, communities could gain access through redistribution to the necessities of life in much longer-lasting and meaningful ways. For Bookchin, municipalism must center a redistributive political strategy. While much left strategy today prioritizes the creation of alternative economic institutions such as cooperatives or mutual aid programs, libertarian municipalism emphasizes the creation of the alternative political institution of the popular assembly. By focusing our time and energy on the creation and empowerment of these alternative political institutions working class people would eventually be able to gain access to an entire cities economic resources rather than the simply what can be collectively shared from the wage labor of other exploited peoples.

In South Africa, Abahlali baseMjondolo organizes shack dwellers into locally based, direct democratic assemblies. Photo: Enough is Enough

An example from South Africa

A great example of a political organization that advances these principles is Abahlali baseMjondolo, a.ka., the South African Shack Dwellers Movement. This organization is based in the struggle of South Africa’s most impoverished, and emerged out of struggles for poor peoples’ right to construct improvised dwellings to live in. They are oriented around a directly democratic assembly model. They regularly engage in direct action through land occupations where they give people control of the land. Their movement has been successful in arguing for a form of democratic development where all peoples have a voice over urban development. Despite harsh repression, including the murder of many of their activists by state forces, they are quickly becoming one of South Africa’s largest left organizations with over 30,000 members, and chapters and elected officials in cities and towns across the country. They are pushing the imagination of what a directly democratic society could look like, while prioritizing political confrontation.

They describe their organizational model as a “party non-party”, for the way it engages in the political sphere, of running candidates and legislation as a normal political party yet different considering their organizational model and tactics, and in the sense that such candidates must have the mandate of popular assemblies while running only in local elections. The South African Shack Dwellers movement is agitating around that essential political question of “Where shall power exist and who shall exercise it?” in ways that put the question to the public at large. Its combination of direct democracy, direct action, and strategic local electoralism has made Abahlali baseMjondolo one of the most prominent political organizations in one of the worlds’ only countries where the left seems to be winning. As the rest of the world fears fascism, socialist land redistribution is being discussed in South Africa and Abahlali baseMjondolo has a prominent voice in leading this process. This South African movement shows the power of running insurgent candidates who are beholden to expressing the immediate necessity of establishing directly democratic dual power situations in our communities, cities, and municipalities.

The MST (Movimento Sem Terra), Brazil’s landless workers movement, at a rally before the occupation of a 13,000 acre farm. Photo: Paul Smith

Fighting fascism with full democracy

In times of fascist dictatorship, we are likely to find broad appeal in fighting to salvage and develop an actual democracy.

As a movement, libertarian municipalism is a marginal tendency even within the left. For these ideas to hit the grander stage, we need to communicate them in bigger ways, develop local assemblies, build a base through engaging in local fights and run insurgent candidates on our revolutionary platform. Simply put, we need assembly-based municipalist platformist organizations like the South African Shack Dwellers Movement, that are able to elevate our political positions and make them visible. Where our ideas enter into mainstream public discourse and where our organizations give people real access to power over their daily lives and existing institutions.

We need to build on the cultural fabric of an America that values a certain conception of democracy through bringing the term’s contradiction into full light while offering our alternative. In times of fascist dictatorship, we are likely to find broad appeal in fighting to salvage and develop an actual democracy. Further, there is a need to prepare ourselves for the inevitable dark and trying times we face, as our political situation in the United States has become increasingly volatile and unpredictable.

Our very survival over the coming years is at stake. In the face of a completely hostile fascist state and a growing right wing militia movement who very soon could begin purges against the left as Steve Bannon’s friend Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian dictator-in-waiting is promising, we should be developing self defense programs to protect not just our organizing communities but our communities at large from persecution.

The establishment of a popular direct democracy would imply the popular control, radical reform or the outright abolition of police forces in favor of some form of volunteer defense forces who would be under the jurisdiction of the new popular government. Such a force could fill the essential duties of community defense and safety, while allowing our communities to address many of the systemic issues with our current racist, white supremacist policing and criminal justice system.

Unless we rapidly begin communicating coherent programs for libertarian municipalist dual power I fear that we will have little real ability to stop this inevitable fascist creep. In times of dictatorship, rising fascism and hopelessness we need to offer people real lived examples of direct democracy, give them access to power and boldly put these ideas into public discourse. We can win the legitimacy battle by building a base through engaging in local campaigns that give people more power and control over their lives and communities. We can do this alongside running candidates with revolutionary municipalist platforms, even if we don’t think they have a chance. If our ideas are true and we are true to ourselves we might just end up winning!

We shouldn’t fear putting our ideas out there, communicating our desired world and our utopia, even if we don’t have all of the organizational bits and pieces put together to prefigure it. We never will until we abolish these systems. We have to get comfortable with that and stay true to our ethics and vision and communicate that in bigger and better ways while giving others inspiration to join in, shape it and work with us to push the world off its tracks to oblivion.

Tizz Bee is a community organizer based in Portland Oregon. They were a key outside support organizer with the Sept. 9th international prison strike and have co-founded several communalist projects including Demand Utopia.

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