What's it like for a social movement to take control of a city?

http://theecologist.org/2018/may/11/whats-it-social-movement-take-control-city
Date Written:  2018-05-11
Publisher:  The Ecologist
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX22944

Ada Colau surprised many when she won the election to become mayor of Barcelona. The housing rights activist was part of a deep social movement aiming for participatory democracy. But this latest article from the Symbiosis Research Collective examines how winning the election was just the first step

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

We proposed a broad vision of how to create a new world in the shell of the old in the last three installments of our column. We can chart a new path forward by grounding that vision in the lessons learned from past struggles and an understanding of how hierarchy is the shared root of oppression.

But this can all feel a bit intangible without clear examples. To get an idea of what we want the future to look like, we need to take inspiration from and learn from those already building the institutions of tomorrow, today. In the next few installments, we’ll be highlighting movements and initiatives that we think are some of the seeds of a new world, already sprouting.

In the summer of 2015, the streets of Barcelona pulsed with a victorious energy. Members of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), a grassroots organisation fighting to stop evictions in the wake of the 2008 housing crisis, had started what they call a 'citizen platform', Barcelona En Comú.

Subject Headings

• Barcelona