“The Floyd rebellion, if followed by a general strike and People’s Assemblies, can blossom into an instrument of dual power that could radically transform society.”
Tag: assemblies
Alex Kostantopoulos: “The Law of the Zapatista: A Presentation about the Laws Passed by EZLN”
“In the autonomous municipalities of Zapatistas, laws that are passed from the Council of Governance are not enforced by police or a judicial system but through a way that treats offenders as members of the community. Justice is delivered by the authorities of the Zapatistas. They resolve issues among the members of the community and…
lundi matin: “A strange time/weather”
“Furio Jesi distinguishes between revolt and revolution, which cut across two different times. Revolt is not an aborted revolution. Revolt is the time of myth, a time that bursts in, that breaks historical causality. … The revolutionary parties or any structured organisation are thus incapable of taking part in the revolt and even less of…
Julius Gavroche: “From extinction rebellion to desirous rebellion”
“From the Extinction Rebellion movement, we learn that we are in the midst of an ecological emergency.”
Two statements that have appeared amidst the gilets jaunes “movement”
“All contemporary anti-capitalist movements must abandon the self-illusion of being intrinsically opposed to capitalism; whatever such movements may emerge, they will constitute themselves in the very struggle to destroy/escape capital. The heterogeneity of contemporary social movements also condemns all possibility of representation. The gilets jaunes possess the virtue of self-consciously embracing this condemnation or refusal. The question then…
“Call from the Yellow Vests of Commercy to set up popular assemblies”
‘Here in Commercy, in the Meuse, we have been operating from the beginning with daily popular assemblies, where each person participates equally. We organized to block entrances to the city and service stations, and filtering road blocks. In the process, we built a cabin in the central square. We meet there every day to organize…
Jodi Dean interviewed by Alfie Bown
It gets interesting when people fight over the description of a particular crowd: is this a crowd, with some potential connection to the people struggling for freedom and equality, some connotation of the masses who are right to assemble and demand, or is it just a violent mob? The fight over the description of the…
Luke Mergner: Review of Jodi Dean’s “Crowds and Party” (2016)
On collectives and the suspension of the individual ego: ‘Dean judges Occupy, in which she participated, and other global protest movements to have failed. … How should the Left organize political movements to avoid the traps of neoliberal subjectivity? Dean’s central themes are announced in the title: crowds and party. … She seems to exhort…
Paul Mason: “Demonstrations matter – they create the kind of power politicians despise”
People are back in the streets: ‘Crowds of protesters form lasting connections – and their later revolts always surprise elites. … The point is not that “mass action works” – it rarely does, on its own. The point is that it’s not futile.’
Judith Butler interviewed on “Acting in Concert”
On the conditions and purposes of political action: “For me, the crowds that matter are those that seek to assert the accountability of the state to the people it claims to represent, and to activate that popular dimension of democratic politics that has the power to legitimate or delegitimate a regime that seeks to lay…