A set of intersecting crises has made urban life increasingly difficult for all but the wealthy. Housing has become unaffordable and insecure. Work has become casualised and wages have stagnated, leaving many workers unable to sustain an adequate standard of living. Despite pretensions towards multiculturalism,...

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...

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...

As we witness the limits of the imaginable being radically shifted, the Zapatista experience is more relevant than ever. Yet, despite the challenges, in 26 years of their struggle for autonomy, Zapatistas have built functioning social arrangements based on bottom-up democracy, cooperation and communal justice,...

For some activists on the Labour left, municipal politics may now offer a constructive outlet and an opportunity to play a useful political role by using town halls as a base for action and agitation, linking up with trade unions, tenants’ unions, social movements and...

As part of the introductory speech made by activist and academic Elisabeth Dau in the Open Eyes Economy Summit held in Krakow on the 20th of November 2018, she explores the relationship between municipalism and cultural policies as “democratic culture.” Photo: Stephan Müller

First of a series of articles on new municipalism, this piece focuses on the trajectory and work of Marielle Franco, a Brazilian feminist activist known for her defence of human rights and her struggle against the many threats posed to them in Rio de Janeiro....

Venezuela’s communes bring together communal councils—local units of direct democratic self-government—with productive units known as social production enterprises. As Chávez himself often put it, the choice on the table is increasingly between la comuna o nada, the commune or nothing. Photo: Amber Lamoreaux

What lessons can we draw from the experience of the first “rebel cities” of Spain in terms of confrontation with corporations and established powers? And how, beyond conquering government at municipal level, can we build strategies for effective and enduring change, with social movements and...

Labor unions are losing political force in the US. Unless organized labor finds solutions to problems pervasive within its own organizations and structures, union membership numbers will continue to shrink. In order to revitalize labor unions, the lack of internal democracy is to be reversed....

Cities account for nearly 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and many of them are experiencing more instances of extreme weather, heat, droughts and flooding due to climate change. Climate change negatively affects poor communities, women, people with disabilities, indigenous groups and other marginalized populations the most....

Strongly affected by deindustrialisation, and more recently by austerity policies imposed on councils following the financial crisis, Preston, in the north of England, has chosen to no longer depend on external investors for its “development” and radically reorient its public procurement to favour local economic...