Prema novom municipalizmu, prema neustrašivim gradovima

Green Academy: Moving Beyond Fragments

Organized by: Institute for Political Ecology (IPE, Institut za političku ekologiju)

Location: Spomen dom, Komiža, Vis, Croatia

Date: 25th August 2018

Speakers: Debbie Bookchin (Institute for Social Ecology, USA), Alexandra Strickner (Attac Austria), Iva Marčetić (Zagreb je NAŠ!, Croatia), Ksenija Radovanović (Ne davimo Beograd, Serbia)

Moderated by: Danijela Dolenec (Institute for Political Ecology, Croatia)

 

Toward New Municipalism, Toward Fearless Cities

 

Initially we would like to try to identify common grounds that link these contemporary political platforms that self-identify as municipalist: on what principles do they ground their practice, how they understand their relationship to social movements on the one hand, and their engagement with political institutions such as elections, city assemblies on the other.

 

Another question that we want to address is why we are witnessing a proliferation of municipalist platforms now? Which features of the current social or political conjuncture seem relevant or conducive to their appearance?

 

Which features seem relevant for their success? Where they have been successful, what is the character of the change that they bring to local communities and/or local political institutions?

 

Also, it would be important to address the ‘feminization of politics’ that has occurred within the practice of municipalist platforms. What does this mean, through some concrete examples? How do we explain this? What are the implications of this for the future of political organization? Furthermore, in what way is a politics centered on the city particularly relevant for the Left? What possibilities does this open, as well as how does it delimit the goals of municipalist platforms? To what extent is municipalism linked to resistance to neoliberal transformations of cities? Finally, how do municipalist platforms relate to national and European level political struggles? How do you see the limits of municipalism, for better or worse? Should we maintain autonomy and distance between these struggles, or aim for them to converge?

 

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DEBBIE BOOKCHIN is an author and award-winning investigative journalist who has written for The Atlantic, The Nation. The New York Times. The New York Review of Books. Roar Magazine and numerous other publications. She has been a featured speaker focusing on radical municipalist politics at various universities and conferences including The Left Forum in New York City, The Network for an Alternative Quest in Hamburg, Germany, and the Fearless Cities summits in Barcelona 2017 and New York City 2018. Bookchin served as press secretary for U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders from 1991-1994. She coedited a recent book of essays on municipalism by her father, Murray Bookchin, called The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Verso 2015) and is coauthor of the book The Virus and the Vaccine (St. Martin‘s Press 2004).

 

ALEXANDRA STRICKNER holds a masters degree in political economy of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She is co-founder of Attac Austria. She is actively engaged in the development and promotion of economic alternatives to neoliberal globalization. She has co-organised two congresses around “The good life for all” in 2015 and 2017. She is one of the co-founders of the Austrian Platform “Anders Handeln” (www.anders~handeln.at), the post Stop-TTIP platform that works towards alternatives to neoliberal trade and investment policies.

 

IVA MARČETIĆ is architect and activist. For more than a decade she has been part of the collectives and movements fighting against privatization of public goods and resources. She works in Right to the city, Zagreb as a community organizer and researcher for housing politics and urban planning. She is a part Zagreb je NAŠ municipal platform and coordinated its neighborhood groups. She lives and works in Zagreb.

 

KSENlJA RADOVANOVlĆ is architect by profession, she is a member of the Ministry of Space, a do-thank from Belgrade that connects social activists, socially engaged artists, architects, and citizens, who strive together to claim their ”right to the city”. Ksenija is also an activist of the Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own initiative, formed in 2014 originally in reaction to the imposition of the ”Belgrade Waterfront” project (“Beograd na vodi”). She was active in the 2018 local election, in which the initiative won 28.000 (3.4%) votes – not enough to enter the City of Belgrade Assembly, but more than enough to inspire them to continue their struggle for a more just distribution of common resources and active inclusion of citizens in the development of their environment.

 

DANIJELA DOLENEC is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Zagreb and President of the Managing Board of IPE. She earned her master’s degree from the LSE (2005) and her PhD in political science from ETH Zurich (2012). Some of her recent writing focuses on the Right to the City movement in Croatia, the Green party ORaH and the political impact of veteran organizations in Croatia.

Dijelovi panela prikazani su u mozaičnom pregledu programa vaninstitucionalnog političkog obrazovanja trideset i četvrte epizode edukativno-mozaične emisije „Promjena okvira“, emitirane 10. studenog 2018. na TV Istra, uskoro dostupne na SkriptaTV.