As we continue to watch federal and state governments fail us on issue after issue \u2014 from climate change to voting rights to even the most basic of human rights, such as the right to an abortion \u2014 a growing movement of change-makers are beginning to look closer to home for ways to exercise political agency and to reshape their world.<\/p>\n
This movement has been referred to as the \u201cmunicipalist moment,” one which puts the city at the heart of the revolutionary struggle. Broadly speaking, municipalism is a bottom-up political system that puts power in the hands of the people working from blocks to neighborhoods to the city. At its heart is the desire to transform society into one that reflects the values of solidarity, democracy, equity, sustainability and pluralism.<\/p>\n
On May Day, residents of the Los Angeles area are taking to the streets to begin a two-year project aimed at taking back their city. Anchored by Los Angeles for All<\/a>, a network of self-organized social movements, the intention of this place-based project is to craft a municipalist platform that reflects the needs of the residents instead of corporations, opens up space for direct democratic reforms, and puts power back in the hands of the people.<\/p>\n Based in the El Sereno neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles, Yvonne Yen Liu is the coordinator of the Los Angeles for All and the Municipalism Learning Series<\/a> project, as well as the research director of the Solidarity Research Center<\/a>, a worker self-directed nonprofit that advances solidarity economies. In this interview, Liu discusses what municipalism entails, the importance of intersectionality in democratizing movements and how others can get involved.<\/p>\n Robert Raymond: I want to start with some basic table-setting. The term \u201cmunicipalism\u201d conjures a few different images in my mind, but I\u2019m wondering if you could start by just unpacking the term. What is municipalism? <\/strong><\/p>\n Yvonne Yen Liu:<\/strong> At the heart of it, municipalism is about democratizing the local economy and the state \u2014 there are three characteristics to it. First, it\u2019s directly democratic, meaning that people are participating in an authentic way, not just electing a representative to make decisions on their behalf. Second, it’s feminist. It’s important to value the labor that is done in terms of caring labor<\/a>, in terms of housework, in terms of caregiving \u2014 whether that’s for children or for elders. But that’s an important piece to consider and also an important group of people to value in terms of participation in politics. And then the third, [municipalism is] anti-capitalist. We’re not trying to control our economy in order to continue the status quo of the economy.<\/p>\n Capitalism is neither natural nor necessary. And I don’t think it needs to be the order of things. Municipalism is about creating different types of social relationships. That could take the form of a solidarity economy, which is an economy based on principles of cooperation, mutuality and inclusion. Or it could be based on a different form of economic organization where workers aren’t exploited for their labor but instead, own the means of production, as Marx famously wrote over 200 years ago. So we could have worker-owned cooperatives, for example, or worker councils, instead.<\/p>\n I love that. And I think that all of those three different points that you mentioned — direct democracy, feminist and anti-capitalist \u2014 they intersect in so many ways. Worker cooperatives, for example, are an example of direct democracy, but within the economic realm, right? So it’s also capitalist. And then one could argue that as workers have control over their own livelihoods and the decisions made in their workplaces, a lot of issues could be brought up that are overlooked. For example, how we dealt \u2014 or didn\u2019t deal \u2014 with issues of care work during the pandemic. Broadly speaking, those issues are feminist issues that typically go unheard or unaddressed in traditional firms.<\/strong><\/p>\n