Social change and systems change go hand-in-hand. Movements for democracy and human rights are most effective when they aim to transform unjust, unequitable economic systems. In this episode, Laura Flanders travels to Spain to learn how people in two of the regions most brutally repressed...

Progressive municipalist city governments in Europe have introduced important policies to promote citizen participation, public ownership of services, expanded affordable housing, and many more. But their radical democratic programmes face obstacles from both EU and national neoliberal legislation. Photo: Pixabay

The tourism industry employs almost five times as many people as car manufacturing in the EU. In much of Southern Europe, it has been a lonely growth area throughout years of stagnation. But for cities such as Rome and Venice, its side effects have been...

For centuries, workers have organized themselves in order to collectively resist the oppressive and exploitative forces of capital. From the early 1900s to the current day, the most common form of worker organizing has been the labor union. With the rise of urbanization, over half...

What is “New Municipalism”? In this first of a new series Ross seeks clarification from scholar-activists Bertie Russell and Matt Thompson who give us a conceptual and historical take on this new urban movement, offering reflections on UK examples like Preston. Photo: Henry & Co.

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down “closed” spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b)...

In 2015, the first Fearless Cities conference, hosted by Barcelona en Comú, became the starting point of a global municipalist movements that brings together a wide array of experiences with one thing in common: their will to promote the radicalization of democracy, and to do...

Portland’s city council has set a new bar for North American housing reform by legalizing up to four homes on almost any residential lot. It’s the most pro-housing reform to low-density zones in US history. Portland’s new rules will also offer a “deeper affordability” option:...

Black Socialists of America is a network of anti-capitalist black Americans who are not just interested in building up a platform for black American leftists or getting the ideas of black American leftists out into popular dialogue; we’re also trying to push mass education in...

By interpreting the results of the world values survey one of the conclusions that scholars are getting to is that people value democracy, but just not the kind of representative democracy that they have. In addition, political parties from the extreme right are gaining support...

Cooperation Jackson is only five years old, but the vision behind it is older. The original founders began to strategize to build a community of cooperatives in 2001, while many still lived in disparate parts of the country. Eventually, they chose to launch their participatory...

Universal healthcare, a green economy, affordable and sustainable housing, and much more: for many people, the Green New Deal sounds too good to be true at a time when trust in politicians has been eroded by too many empty promises. This is why locally organised, democratic movements are not just crucial to...