GAVNet Collaborative Curation

Libertarian municipalism is a political program developed by libertarian socialist theorist Murray Bookchin, to create democratic citizens' assemblies in towns and urban neighborhoods. The assemblies in these free municipalities join together to replace the state with a directly democratic confederation.

Municipalism is nothing other than thousands of neighbours coming together in a joint effort to build a new model for their city. In the summer of 2014 a set of initiatives necessary for staging a so-called institutional assault were already appearing in several Spanish cities: the municipalist movements. These departed from existing common grounds in their desire to overcome the two-party system, end with corruption, and democratise the local councils.

And here we begin to see how the age of social media resembles the pre-literate, oral world. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other platforms are fostering an emerging linguistic economy that places a high premium on ideas that are pithy, clear, memorable and repeatable (that is to say, viral). Complicated, nuanced thoughts that require context don’t play very well on most social platforms, but a resonant hashtag can have extraordinary influence.

Good history makes for good citizens. A history that glosses over the conquest of the continent is partial, in both senses of the word. It misleads people about the past and misinforms their debates about the present. In charting a course for the future, Americans would do well to put the dispossession of native peoples back on the map.