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When confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, John F. Kennedy had on his mind a book that he had recently read. It was The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s newly-published and now-classic account of how the European powers blundered into the First World War. Kennedy was impressed by the book and encouraged many…
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Zohran Mamdani (left) out campaigning in Flushing last June. The New York City mayoral election has drawn more attention than usual this year, thanks to the initially surprising rise and eventual victory last night of the radical left candidate Zohran Mamdani. At a time when American democracy is declining at an alarming speed thanks to…
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Roger Hallam is not known for optimism. The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil is quite the fire-and-brimstone preacher when it comes to climate change. But when I heard him a few weeks ago on a call with Assemble and like-minded activists, he sounded genuinely hopeful about the assemblies that they were about…
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All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse is a book by two activists connected with the Portuguese climate campaign Climáximo, Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden. I heard about All In during a Rev21 webinar with Alice Gato, another Climáximo activist, and gave it a read. All In begins with the argument that the…
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If you’re in despair about the state of the world, the best thing you can do is join a movement for an alternatives — one that can make a real difference. My view is that the current crises are too severe to be answered in the existing mainstream. And while past radical movements like communism…
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I’ve written earlier about an article Roger Hallam wrote on the revolutionary potential of assemblies. I’ve more recently been listening to his podcast, Designing the Revolution, mostly from 2023 with some more scattered episodes since. Though it appears to be aimed at starting an environmental activist group, it has important lessons for starting a people’s…
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Whatever your political beliefs, Murray Bookchin argued against them. When we face drastic political, environmental and economic problems, we need radical solutions. And that means that we need to look to radical traditions. That’s what led me to Murray Bookchin, an American political thinker and writer. He was an anarchist for most of his adult…
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