My guest tonight, a returning guest is Marina Sitrin. She's a leading thinker for Occupy, I shouldn't say was, she still is. She's been an author of multiple books on Horizontalism, and now, she is a co-author of the new book, They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy.

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Transcript of the podcast interview:

Marina Sitrin: Hope for Activists: A World of Successful Protest And Change-- NOW-- New Ideas, While Rejecting Democracy

Thanks to Tsara Shelton for helping with the transcript editing.

My guest tonight, a returning guest is Marina Sitrin. She's a leading thinker for Occupy, I shouldn't say was, she still is. She's been an author of multiple books on Horizontalism, and now, she is a co-author of the new book, They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy.

Rob: Okay, communal council. You say in the book that tens of thousands of communal councils have been established in Venezuela and there's actually a communal council law, what's this about?

MS: Well there's, I mean there's thousands of communal councils and now the law -- so we use, there are two chapters, one on Venezuela and one on Argentina so two Latin America chapters that are separate countries. And we use them as kind of counterpoints, so Argentina's about the autonomous movements organizing in Venezuela. If the movements organizing from below, but because of the government -- especially under Chavez, but still now after Chavez -- that a government that's actually supporting these popular projects and so the communal councils are people who organize -- they organize in your -- it's a certain number of people that it's limited to in your region or neighborhood in your city, or part of your village or your town and then people who come together through assemblies decide certain things that they need and want. So, they make that happen and the way they make that happen financially is getting money from the government so they decide they needed school or they're going to make -- they needed a workplace, or they need roads, or parks or whatever it is and they collectively -- they make the decision to do it and then they get the money from the government and then they carry it out. And then that's been happening, so it's a kind of regional or territorial semi-autonomy and then from there, what exists now are also the communes, so you have these communal councils and when you have a certain number of them they become a commune. So it's like a network -- not exactly governance, but a lot of coordination so kind of like the idea of libertarian municipalism. Which is a Murray Bookchin, social ecology kind of idea.

Rob: And you talk in the book about how this is a manifestation of popular power but also how it's a challenge getting the cooperation between these communal councils and the government, is there risk of co-optation? And it doesn't end, there's a continual work at getting it to work.

MS: Right, right. I mean and that's definitely true in Venezuela, I think even more so now, and what -- and it's that tricky balance of then, that continuing to focus on the power being local and below that way even if there are stronger attempts by the government to co-opt or even at some point to try to end these projects if the popular power is strong enough, it's much, much, much harder to do that. So it's the kind of lessons are to keep our eyes on each other and with each other and what we're doing.

Rob: Alright, next concept: Encuentro.

MS: Yeah, that's a coming together. That's also the Zapatistas use the language of encuentro, but it's being used increasingly around the world because people don't want to say meeting because it's not a meeting, you know you think of a meeting and you think of a large conference table or a board meeting or some kind of hierarchical -- who's making decisions over who -- and Roberts Rules of order. Encuentros are coming together, they're gatherings where decisions are sometimes made, sometimes they're not. There's a lot of different kinds of comings together. One that we reference has to do with knowledge, so not just the physical coming together but the coming together people with different backgrounds and how our knowledge and what we know can come together. So not necessarily knowledge meaning what did you learn in university, but I learned this from my grandmother and I know this from raising my child and I learned this in a book. And bringing all of those different kinds of knowledges together in an encuentro, in a coming together in a horizontal space.

Rob: Okay, recuperating workplaces, Zapatista Subcomandante Marco talks about recuperating history.

MS: Recuperating I think, you know and thinking about the word Occupy, because people have problematized it, rightly so, but it's the word we've used and I think -- when I think of Occupy and what I think a lot of people mean by it is actually recuperate. It's to take and to take back and turn into something else but making a claim for sure on that thing. So the workplaces in Argentina are the taking back of workplaces that were generally abandoned by owners for not being profitable enough, and so workers formed these horizontal assemblies and had equitable wage distribution eventually, but first took over the workplaces and then put them back under production. So in Argentina, there's now 350 of these and they're workplaces. They're like restaurants and health clinics and a hotel, it's not just kind of factories, the way people sometimes think of recuperating work. But it's just the relationship to work and that's spread throughout Latin America and now with the newer movements, it's been taking place in Europe and there's a funny story, when I was in Greece in 2011 because a network of assemblies in Greece translated the book Horizontalism about Argentina and their experiences into Greek. And so people in these assemblies were traveling around and I went with them for a while, with someone from Argentina, and we were talking about, just sharing stories and sharing experiences. And in Thessaloniki, in the northern part of Greece, we're having a great conversation at a certain point someone said, yeah the idea of recuperating workplaces, it's a great idea but it would never work. That's something for people in Argentina or maybe for people in Latin America, but it's not for Greeks, you know our work places are too small anyway it couldn't have the power. And sure enough almost less than a year later, a workplace called Biomed is taken over by workers. This is right outside Thessaloniki in Greece and through assemblies, they decided they were going to recuperate and then they had a direct relationship with people in Argentina and that was what kind of helped push them over the edge to do it. And they're now running this workplace together in common and with a close relationship with people in the newer movements. And not only in Greece, now there's one in Marce in France, there are two in Italy, there's one in Tunisia, one in Turkey, you're seeing a pattern here, right? That they have to do with where there've been these massive new movements. And together people in the communities and workers in these different workplaces have decided that rather than save some employment, just take over the workplace and run it together, and it's been really successful on all different levels of the meanings of success. Both kind of how people feel about themselves in a sense of dignity and also that they still have jobs. The idea of recuperating, kind of taking back what we see as ours, I think it's a deep - can relate to workplaces as I'm talking about, but yeah it can do if we take back our own history, we take back our knowledge, kind of what I think all of these movements are about.

Rob: Okay, so a couple of little inaudible [00:37:21] it's even been done in the United States and that window factory in Chicago area that got so much attention whenever Obama was running for president and then let's talk a little bit more about recuperating history because that's really interesting.

MS: Well just, I mean what we're not told. I mean what you just referenced in Chicago is happening right now, but I'm sure a lot of people don't know about it. And our history, we use the language of we and we explain why we do that. Kind of seeing ourselves as part of a historical collective we and it's a we that -- it's a history that we're generally not taught and that's one that's filled with regular people taking back their work places, their lives, their homes with each other when people are evicted. They're these histories we have of such inspiring -- not just struggle in the sense of protest struggle -- but such inspiring self-organization. Different ways of being and relating that are not in the history books and we need to dig to find them and then recuperate them, take them back this is ours and our history. So we'll need to rewrite all of the history books for sure.

Rob: Like Howard Zinn has made a good start.

MS: Exactly, exactly like Howard Zinn and the different peoples' histories that are being done. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz just did an indigenous people's history in the United States, yeah exactly.

Rob: Alright and I think of it as bottom up history.

MS: Yeah Zinn talked about from below, for sure.

Rob: Alright, another word that you use is protagonist.

MS: Yes, I like that one too because it describes who we are and what we're doing. It's something that's borrowed from the Argentines but then other people kind of use it to being an actor in your life, being a protagonist, you are the subject now of your own history, not kind of the footnote in somebody else's if mentioned at all. So we're the ones making our own history. So kind of against representation and for self-organization and being that person and being able to do it.

Rob: And in the book you describe in Venezuela the 1999 revision of their constitution described and characterized participatory and protagonistic democracy versus liberal and representative form. What's the difference?

MS: It's being very specific about not just participation in the representative sense, but in the protagonistic sense that each person plays an active role so think of assemblies and things like that where you're all actively participating and have a role in all of the decision making.

Rob: Okay. And you say in the book, you talk about political versus protagonist and you say collective protaganism leads to new ways of speaking, and you use the words nosotros, nuestor, yo or, we/us/our and I which is about collective ownership.

MS: In collective ways of thinking, yeah different ways of thinking and being, for sure.

Rob: And you just mentioned that earlier, the idea of we. I mean, it's -- when I meditate I try to do a bottom up meditation, I go from I, me to you to we to all and that's the -- I haven't had Spanish since a long time ago in college, but that's kind of the sequence of the different tenses in Spanish.

MS: Well and going that way in how we're thinking and how one would think about it, it's not just we like you and I sitting here together, but thinking differently about that relationship, both the individual and then the collective and a changing collective and one where each can have their autonomy and relate to one another in an equal way, and create something different together, but yet be unique. I mean that's something where borrowing the Zapatistas again, they say a world in which many worlds fit, and I think that's part of this concept of this different way of thinking about we and all and us and that each of these little pieces that creates a whole, but it is that whole that is important.

Rob: Okay, so I wanted to quote another section from your book, a brief excerpt. You say -- actually I already read it. I shifted things around; it was about the affective politics. So let's move on to Autogestion. Am I saying that right?

MS: Well in Spanish you would say autogestion.

Rob: Autogestion, okay.

MS: Estion, so it's - but it's what you were saying, the self-organization and self-administration. And that's very much related to this idea of recuperation, kind of taking back, but self-organizing it, that we do it ourselves not looking to other people to do things for us, but we self-organize it so it's -- and there's a very strong history all over the world of self-organization and communities and neighborhoods and workplaces since it's bringing back that history but it's also the way people are organizing right now in the movements around the world it's about self-organization and self-administration.

Rob: And another way to put it is it's relocalization, or localization.

MS: That could be a part of it, yeah.

Rob: Okay another concept is autonomy as in autonomous schools, health, agricultural production planning, media, and you didn't mention it, but how about public banking and charter schools? The idea of autonomy and how it's applied.

MS: Yeah, the charter schools and banking would have to be location specific. That would be hard for me to -- I mean we didn't put it in and it would be hard to talk about because it really depends on where and how in the question of control and self-organization. So it's not just about being autonomous but it's from who and how and who can be included or not in this autonomous project. So I think its location -- that can be location specific or regionally specific -

Rob: Okay, so let's jump back, what is the concept of autonomy and autonomous whatever?

MS: Right, and there's a whole body of literature about autonomy and we make it a point to say, this isn't about engaging with some big theoretical discussion on autonomy. Not that it's not interesting but that's not what we're talking about. This is more when you talk to people in the movements and they say, we're autonomous we want to be autonomous and they just mean, we don't want to be a part of these institutions of power that got us into this situation to begin with. Whether that's governments or banks, or whatever the institution is that created the problem, its saying we're organizing autonomously from that. And that also includes left political parties, traditionally unions, doesn't mean there's never a relationship to these institutions, that's different. There's often -- or sometimes anyway -- different relationships to these institutions of power, but the idea of autonomy is we're going to self-organize, in this horizontal way, ourselves first. And then from there decide how and if we're going to have relationships to other institutions of power as they exist now.

Rob: Okay, what happens when the state sees autonomous self organization as a threat to state power?

MS: Then they come in and repress and co-opt and there's a whole bunch of different ways the state comes in because I think they fear losing their legitimacy and actual power. I think in some regions of Spain some of the movements have become so strong, especially the housing movement, they're now 260 groups of this Plataforma, it's this group in defense of housing, people who are being foreclosed on and evicted and what sparked the crisis to begin with, the 2008 housing crisis. But people have been organizing in Spain on such a wide scale in keeping people housed, families housed, occupying new homes and entire buildings that some of these municipal governments have said, okay we're putting a freeze on foreclosures or putting a freeze on evictions. And I think they're doing that, not because they care because they would have done it earlier if they actually cared, but because such power is being built from below that they don't want to get bypassed because it's not just about housing in a lot of these areas. There's also barter networks that are being developed and different types of assemblies for making decisions on all kinds of things related to school and healthcare. So, the fear is people stop looking to the state so one thing they do sometimes is try to co-opt it or try to usurp what the movements doing and try to get credit for it and see if the movement will stop organizing. And in other places it's physical repression so this is where the question of how we create our own autonomy and yet figure out how relate to these institutions' power. Particularly the state is really important because as we continue to develop these autonomous projects and recuperate space in life, there will be increased attempts to shut us down and so thinking about that ahead of time is really important.

Rob: Okay, next concept: Todos Somos -- we all are, as in we are all Bradley Manning; we are all Trayvon Martin.

MS: Exactly. That's exactly. That's what it is, I mean it's related to those concepts of we and affect and seeing ourselves in the other. Not just seeing ourselves in the other, but really being the other. It's not just, oh I feel solidarity with, it's more than just feeling solidarity it's that you are - who you are is linked with that other person and so then, we all are. And linked not just the political outcome of what might to this person, but as a woman who is in a heterosexual relationship, my life it is important to me that we are all gay and lesbian because the society we live in, it affects me how gays and lesbians are treated even if I'm not practicing lesbianism or something. It's that everything is interrelated and how other people are treated is also directly affecting us in a kind of concrete way and then an also more of a philosophical way.

Rob: Okay, how is that manifesting in say, Greece?

MS: For a little while, there were some challenges with it actually because -- in the -- and I'm thinking very specifically about the relationship of the assemblies in neighborhoods and then there were separate groups meeting of migrants. And it -- while in theory people saw themselves as in the same -- that we are all migrants, that wasn't how people were organizing in the beginning in a lot of areas. Not all areas, but in a lot of them. And then with the increased repression by the group Golden Dawn, it's this fascist group that for a long time was given cover by the government and the police and they were beating migrants and sometimes killing them, setting fire to places where they were living. And the assemblies took this on very seriously and started to organize, not just in defense of the migrants but together with migrants organizing and started to make joint assemblies and then see the struggle as interconnected, that it had to be it wasn't just okay now we go and we defend the migrants in our community, but that what they're creating is intertwined with the life of migrants and what's happening to the migrants, so it would be one, one Greek example.

Rob: Okay, we gotta move on because we're running out of time. I'm hoping you might be able to go over a little bit, but we'll see. Free territory or piquete, which means blockade.

MS: Yeah. that's a study again in parts of the world in Latin America but other parts of the world where there's often so much either unemployment or not places of work. So traditionally when people protested workers, you had the strike as an option or a school, you could shut it down, but if you're unemployed or you're in a region of the world where there's not these same spaces that in institutions that can be shut down, people make this piquete, this road blockade. And it's literally blockading major arteries so that traffic can't slow; so it's a different way of kind of stopping commerce. But what's important is that not just what happens in that stopping, but what opens in it and this is where the concept of territory actually kind of starts to play in as well. So this is something that the unemployed movements have done, but it's something that's being done right now all over the world, especially in Argentina I'm thinking of in the north where international mining companies and deforestation projects, think tar sands as well; these projects that are going to exploit the earth that are being planned and people block roads and block major arteries to not allow the passage of say trucks to go and blow up part of a mountain as this happening in la Famatina in Argentina or part of tar sands, to block the road so that the pipeline can't be constructed. But then in that space of shutting something down, people talk to each other and form assemblies and create something new in that space. So it's actually the creating something in that space that's a territorial space, but it's also the construction of something different in these new relationships, in the new politics, in taking care of one another.

Rob: Okay, another concept which I love, and you have a great kind of a mythic story of that -- and demonstrate it, walking and questioning, or making the road as one walks. A multiplicity of paths towards ever changing ends, the end as a process; the rationale behind Occupy's no demands that drove top-down thinking authoritarianism needing people crazy. I love this idea that walking and questioning describes a work in process based on values, solidarity, mutuality, community, equality, self-administration, freedom and that's what you said and I would add other bottom up values like localization, interdependence, caring, empathy and compassion. Talk a little bit about how they fit in.

MS: All of them, I mean I think all of what you said, all of what you named and thinking about it as we go so there's no blueprint, there's no answer it's that we created, and we have to create it together because we don't know and we're only going to find out as we meet each other and talk to each other and see and then kind of go into this concept of -- then we're going to change as we know each other, as situations change so that necessarily means that what we want or what's going to happen or what we try to build is going to have to change, so it's that kind of walking, questioning idea bringing in all of what you mentioned and being -- not having the list of okay we're going to start in with our transitional program, how could we do that? We haven't even talked to each other. You can't have a list of demands until you at least know each other and even still, you probably -- the things you want probably can't be gotten by those institutions of power anyway, out of all of them anyway, so doing it ourselves.

Rob: And you use that phrase caminando preguntamos, which I think translates as walking we ask questions.

MS: Right, exactly, exactly.

Rob: And yet, this is a kind of an abstract concept, but you make it very clear there are very concrete paths that people walk while questioning.

MS: Right, right.

Rob: Like what?

MS: Entire communities of thousands of people in Chaves, Mexico being self-governed with this concept, think about that. Thousands of thousands of people governing themselves with this concept. People living together in different areas with this concept; organizing in the assemblies and making decisions with this spirit, anyway; of not having the answer, but figuring it out together and while we're asking, I know that some people get really frustrated in long assemblies. I don't think there's a need to have all consensus based assemblies, people should find their appropriate form of decision making. But taking some time in that process is important and that it's face to face so that we can do this, so that we have this space to question and ask and build the relationships, and question and ask and build the relationships as we go along.

Rob: And, like I said, this is something that I think is really difficult for people who tend to be authoritarian and as I've recently learned, most people who tend to be authoritarian are not people who are leaders and giving commands, they're people who need to be told what to do and how to think and what to feel. They are people who need authoritarian people telling them what to do.

MS: Which is -- I mean this is how they teach us in school, the absurdity of being whatever, a 17 year old and having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom? To ask permission. I mean the way we're taught to be in society is all about this following rules and not doing things together and not thinking together and the right answer, not collaborating.

Rob: Okay, next concept. No to Representative Democracy and there's a quote I want to read that you cite in your book: Almost every country in the world claims to be democratic, democracy is used to argue for everything from wars, repression, control and spying to the right of people to carry weapons, shoot home intruders, evict families and deforest the land. Democracy, while a seemingly broad term is generally used with a very specific meaning. Generally as a synonym for liberal democracy, but liberal democracy is far from being the only possible form of democracy. And then, just to -- one last piece of the quote. Democracy is -- you cite Fani from Thessaloniki, Greece. We don't make decisions, we have no real power so democracy is a concept that has been destroyed to such a degree that if we're about to use it again, we should completely reinvent it.

MS: Yeah, this Fani she's a wonderful organizer in Greece, part of a neighborhood assembly that's mainly women actually, it's a place called Anopoli. Whether we call it democracy or not, I like the idea of recuperating the idea of taking back democracy as the people rule, the people make the decisions and it's probably a perfect place to conclude the conversation because the people don't rule, we don't make decisions over the most important things in our life. If you really think about what's most important to you, we don't have a say over any of it, but we can and we should, and that's what these new movements -- you know, at their heart, what they're about is saying, no to the way things are and beginning to experiment with different ways of being together, so as to make decisions, that are most important to us. Kind of exercising that democracy muscle that's been dormant for so long that it's kind of uneven and taking a little bit and it's going to take us a little while but really beginning to create meaning in democracy, in our deciding our own lives and our future and our relationships.

Rob: Okay, we're wrapping up --

MS: Yes.

Rob: So, you know what? I have to say, this book is just so rich with ideas for people who want to change and are not satisfied with what's been going on. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's a great book, we barely touched it. I think we could go on for another hour but you're a new mom and you need to take care of your child. So thank you very much for what you've done and for the conversation.

MS: Thank you very much for organizing it so nicely, okay take care.

Rob: Okay bye.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
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