Radicalising democracy: How Hannah Arendt’s legacy endures in Barcelona

Written by Hettie O’Brien. Excerpt from Verso’s blog In 1963, having fled Germany for New York, political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that: “no one could be called either happy or free without participating, and having a share, in public power”. Had she been alive to witness Brexit, the ascendancy of Donald Trump, and the election […]

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November 29, 2018
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Citizens’ Assemblies: Democracy that Works

Written by Marcin Gerwin. The following post is Chapter 1 of his new publication Citizen Assemblies: Guide to Democracy that Works. Imagine a group of people of different ages who meet in order to settle some matter important for a city, a country or for the European Union. This group was not selected through elections […]

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November 28, 2018
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Wake Up Call on the Environment: a Student Manifesto

Written by Manifeste étudiant pour un réveil écologique, consisted of students from various French higher education schools: AgroParisTech, CentraleSupélec, Ecole Polytechnique, HEC Paris, and ENS Ulm.   We, students in 2018, make the following observation: despite the many calls from the scientific community, despite the irreversible changes already observed around the world, our societies keep moving […]

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November 9, 2018
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The Social Dimension of Energy Transition

Written by Dr Clemens Hoffmann, lecturer in International Politics, University of Stirling, Scotland. The present text is the speech of Dr Hoffmann at Direct Democracy Festival, held on 06/09/18 in Thessaloniki. Thanks for the invite, it is great to be part of something I had always dreamt of in a way doing myself but the […]

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November 7, 2018
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Preventing Ecological Catastrophe Means Abolishing Hierarchy and Domination

Written by Yavor Tarinski / Image source: conservationmagazine.org   The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man[1] Murray Bookchin   Nowadays the need to act against the ongoing environmental degradation seems more than evident. From marginal activist groups to governments of the strongest countries on the planet, […]

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September 25, 2018
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Democratic Revolution in Rojava

Written by Mathew Little I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Rojava (the predominantly Kurdish region in Northern Syria) recently and I think what they are doing in terms of building democracy from the street upwards (in contrast to our barely representative systems) deserves our studied attention. It certainly appears very impressive and they aren’t […]

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August 27, 2018
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