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...

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...

An interview with Iva Ivsic, local representative of Zagreb Je NAS! at the Our Common City conference in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one: Part two: Photo: Ash Edmonds

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...

The municipalist movement in the US today is like a seedling. It is small and delicate, fresh and brimming with potential. Although we often look for leftist leadership in big cities like New York City or Chicago, these new municipal leaders are rooted in relatively...

In 2011, an informal coalition was formed (the Urban Movements Congress) comprising urban activist groups from all over Poland. In the local elections of 2014 some of these platforms got seats in many city councils. The author explains where this movement comes from and the...

After apartheid, Cape Town remained a city of islands: social, cultural and economic divisions are the rule. This has long undermined city-wide collective organizing and solidarity. The severe COVID19 lockdown and the goverment response aggravated the situation for many inhabitants. But an unprecedented community-led response...

Until relatively recently, the status quo in the cities of the Global South vacillated between neglect and persecution of the poor. In the past decade, however, we have seen a paradigm shift in urban policy, and cities in Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere are pioneering new...

What this crisis has demonstrated is that grassroots, bottom-up organising can be so much more effective and so much more responsive to local needs than top-down government programmes. The principles of spontaneous, participatory, open organising are the foundation of groups such as those closing a...

INDEX 0. JUSTIFICATION 1. SITUATIONS COVERED BY THIS DOCUMENT 2. PREVENTION 3. CODE OF CONDUCT 3.1. OUR VALUES. WHAT IS OK. 3.2. WHAT IS NOT OK. EXAMPLES. 4. LINES OF ACTION IN THE EVENT OF SITUATIONS OF  VIOLENCE 0. JUSTIFICATION This document proposes two lines...

Is the left today “woke,” i.e. is it self-consciously learning from the limits of the path it has been on to design a new systemic architecture based on alternative, networked institutions to challenge the status quo? New institutions are needed because in the past farms,...

In the absence of mass struggles, the radical left  in Italy has declined as an electoral force across most of the country, even despite the PD’s abandonment of social democracy in favor of a US-style corporate liberalism. However, there is another side to the Italian...