A municipalist alternative for San Juan and Puerto Rico: An interview with Pablo Benson
Versión castellana. While this past November 3rd all the world’s attention was fixed on who would end up with the keys to the White House, another set of elections was taking place over 1,500 miles away. Municipal, legislative, and gubernatorial races were being held in…
New municipalists in the UK must judge this moment correctly and calibrate accordingly
The writing of this piece was prompted by a recent article by Matthew Thompson: “The uses and abuses of municipalism on the British Left”. In his strident and finely written piece, Matt argues that the term “new municipalism” is too often conflated into general debates…
For Amsterdam’s experiment in new municipalism to succeed, it must put vague terms into practice
“There has been something strange [going on] for the last forty years in Amsterdam”, Joost, a community organizer in the west of the city, reflects. He frowns remembering his experiences as part of the squatting movement in the 1980s, when Amsterdam’s streets and neighbourhoods were…
An ambitious, radical Green-Left Coalition has won Zagreb’s elections. Here’s how they did it.
This year’s local elections in Croatia, and in particular elections in the country’s capital of Zagreb, have been marked by the overwhelming success of the Green-Left Coalition headed by Možemo (We Can) and Zagreb je naš (Zagreb is Ours). The Coalition’s programme, based on consultations…
New municipalism, property and freedom: The battle for rent regulation in Spain
As explained by Matthew Thompson, new municipalism is not just about municipal governments defining and implementing transformative public policies at the local level. It means laying out a new political project, one in which the municipal government is the starting point, and where institutional actors…
Don’t Panic! How Italian municipalists tackled COVID-19
The deadly outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy marked a turning point in the global conversation about the pandemic. When the disease first emerged and spread throughout China, people in powerful western countries found it easy to dismiss the threat. But by late February, news of…
The uses and abuses of municipalism on the British Left
It’s becoming something of a well-worn joke amongst those of us thinking and writing about so-called ‘new municipalism’ (I can’t speak for those actually making it happen) that it so often gets conflated with ‘progressive politics happening in cities’ – or, worse, progressive policies enacted…
Summer of Fire: Municipalism and the George Floyd Uprising
The summer and fall of 2020 brought a reckoning on racialized violence in the US at a scale unseen in generations. On November 5, in the midst of immense political tension regarding the high-stakes presidential election, the Sheriff’s Office of Multnomah County, Oregon (which contains…
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…