Wildfires, housing crisis, fascist street violence, and an uprising: this municipalist organization in Portland, Oregon was in the middle of it all
In April 2020, Covid-19 was sweeping the United States. Store shelves were wiped clean as the capitalist system of distribution was breaking down. In Portland Oregon, the group Symbiosis PDX worked together with a number of partner groups to facilitate the community production of thousands…
Neomunicipalism in Naples
Napoli’s neomunicipal experience began in 2011. Mayor Luigi de Magistris was re-elected for a second five-year term in 2016. He and the coalition (of which I, as a city councillor, am a member) are still governing Italy’s third biggest city (after Rome and Milan) and…
Italian municipalism: patterns, missed opportunities and the way forward
Over the previous few years, a number of Italian cities have experienced the rise of ‘new municipalist’ platforms. The achievements of these platforms are many and significant, but also substantially similar to those made by other municipalist-based local governments around Europe. Municipalist movements made it…
Symbiosis: federating municipalist movements in North America for real democracy
That the Commune can be the place for self-government is not a new idea for radical social movements in North America. For decades, the social thinker Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) has developed, advocated and given life to the idea of libertarian municipalism, also dubbed Communalism in…