Barcelona en Comú: The municipalist movement to seize the institutions
An understanding of Spain’s 15M movement’s mutation into what has been termed an “institutional takeover”. Focusing in particular on the potential ties and limitations of municipal politics, discussing the open possibilities of “Radical Municipalism” in changing political power relations in the city. It will also…
Jackson rising: The struggle for economic democracy and black self-determination in Jackson, Mississippi
Mississippi is the poorest state in the U.S. with the highest percentage of Black people and a history of vicious racial terror. The concurrent Black resistance is the backdrop and context for the drama captured in the collection of essays that is Jackson Rising: The…
Dissemination report: Governing in and against austerity
This dissemination report titled Governing in and Against Austerity provides an overview and reports initial findings from eight case studies on austerity governance in Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes. Find the report here: Governing in and against austerity Photo: Philippe Oursel
Ecology or catastrophe: the life of Murray Bookchin
This book is the first-ever biography of Murray Bookchin, written by his personal collaborator and copyeditor, Janet Biehl. From 1987-2006, Biehl edited every word that Bookchin wrote, and worked with him on numerous articles and books. She tells the story of Bookchin’s life from a…
A democratic devolution underway in Barcelona: Barcelona en Comú
This paper seeks to outline the changes that enabled the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú (Catalan for “Barcelona in Common”) to win the elections in Barcelona in 2015, a victory that signaled a rupture in the status quo of Spanish politics. Although the citizen platform…
Democratic confederalism
Political prisoner and theorist who helped cofound the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, takes a closer look at the historical background of the paradigma between nation-state. With a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep…
History, civilization, and progress: outline for a criticism of modern relativism
Murray Bookchin reviews aspects of the history of the US and abroad in recent decades leading of up to the 90’s from a political lens; the academy and a subculture of self-styled postmodernist intellectuals have nourished an entirely new ensemble of cultural conventions that stem…
Cities against centralization
This article is an homage to, and review of: The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship by Murray Bookchin. In Bookchin’s writing we can see that in his account is a pioneer effort that challenges misleading images of modern industrial achievement and triumphant western democracy….