Letter from Catalonia: Barcelona’s occupy mayor wins a second term
Four years after the first wave of municipalist governments in Spain, many of the so-called cities of change have failed to renew the results obtained in the elections that placed them in power. While the Catalan independence movement has radically changed the political landscape, thus…
Barcelona Deputy Mayor Gerardo Pisarello on Sanctuary Cities
Gerardo Pisarello, Barcelona Deputy Mayor during the 2015 – 2019 term, intervened at the “Sanctuary Cities” gathering of March 7, 2017, to disclose the position of the new municipal government on the matter. Photo: Pixabay
Barcelona: crisis austerity and socio-political change
This case study of Barcelona is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. On one hand, for the strength of the participatory and collaborative tradition of Barcelona. On the other hand, because Barcelona has become particularly important since the local elections of May 2015, which…
Rebel cities: the citizen platforms in power
The paper examines the successes, limitations and possibilities of citizen platforms after their first months in power in cities across Spain. Photo: Pixabay
Casting shadows: Chokwe Lumumba and the struggle for racial justice and economic democracy in Jackson, MS
W.E.B Du Bois wrote these famous words in Black Reconstruction, linking America’s promise of democracy to the horrendous conditions for Black people in the South. Sadly, the State of Mississippi has long been a bellwether in this regard, from slavery and lynchings to Jim Crow,…
Spain’s electoral rebellion: welcome to the post-party political era, part I
Madrid, Barcelona and other major Spanish cities are now governed by independent citizen fronts called “confluences.” Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comú, Zaragoza en Común and La Marea Atlántica (A Coruña) are confluences weaved together by the M15-Indignados social ecosystem. Other political parties, like Podemos and…
The Jackson – Kush plan and the struggle for black self-determination and economic democracy
The J – K Plan in its concrete form is the product of a self-generated organizing challenge that emerged from the 2008 Ideological Conference of MXGM and NAPO. The challenge was to test the strength of our organizing model and work in the South after…