Keith McHenry
Food Not Bombs
Keith is a co-founder of Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails. He has recovered, cooked and shared food with the hungry for over 40 years - spending a total of two years in jail (and at one point facing 25 years to life) as a result of his activism. His books include Hungry for Peace and The Anarchist Cookbook. He discusses the origins of Food Not Bombs, the principles that ground its organising practices, and the story of how it became the global movement it is today.
Marcela Olivera
Autogestión: the Cochabamba water wars and horizontal organising beyond the state
Marcela is a water commons organizer based in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She was the key international liaison for the Coalition for the Defence of Water and Life, the organization that fought and defeated water privatization in the country. Marcela discusses the Cochabamba ‘water wars’, the Andean concept of autogestión, and indigenous traditions of self-organisation, direct action and democracy in Bolivia.
Nomsa Sizani
The living politics of Abahlali baseMjondolo
Nomsa is the General Secretary of Abahlali baseMjondolo (shack dwellers of South Africa) - the largest political movement outside of party politics and trade unionism in South Africa. She discusses the origins of Abahlali, the movement’s experience of state and police violence, the philosophy of Abahlalism and its grounding in the Southern African concept of Ubuntu, and the communalism and direct democratic organising practices they choose to adopt.
Jayne Malenfant
Youth Action Research Revolution
Jayne is an activist and researcher at McGill University in Montreal. Since experiencing homelessness in her teens, she has been organising with other young homeless people living in the presence of state harm in order to support the development of communities of solidarity and care on the street. She discusses mutual aid organising in Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic, and her project Youth Action Research Revolution.
John P. Clark
Realizing Beloved Community
John is an eco-communitarian anarchist, philosopher, and Professor Emeritus at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is also coordinator of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology. He discusses the concept of Necrocene to define our current era of ecological breakdown and death, and the development of a non-Eurocentric dialectical social ecology in order for us to cultivate communities of liberation and solidarity.
Ashish Kothari
Eco-Swaraj
Ashish is a founder-member of Indian environmental group Kalpavriksh. He has (co)authored or (co)edited over 30 books, and helps coordinate the Vikalp Sangam, Radical Ecological Democracy, and Global Tapestry of Alternatives processes. He discusses the concepts of Swaraj and Eco-Swaraj, examples of directly-democratic autonomous communities organising in India today, and how we might find ways to link across such movements globally in pursuit of pluriversal transformative change.
Dylan Fitzwater
The Zapatista Collective Heart
Dylan has encountered the Zapatistas as a human rights observer, as a participant in several international gatherings, and as a student at the Zapatista language school in Oventik. He is author of the book Autonomy is in Our Hearts. Dylan discusses the indigenous Tsotsil concepts of Ch’ulel (collective potentiality) and O’on (collective heart) and how this way of being in and seeing the world shapes the Zapatista social and political organisational structures.
Rhiannon Firth
Mutual Aid Organising, Political Utopias, and Immanent Revolution
Rhiannon is part-time Researcher in Sociology at the University of Essex, and the rest of the time she does independent research and writing. She works on anarchist utopias, anti-authoritarian social movements and prefigurative politics. She discusses contemporary political utopias, the recent proliferation of mutual aid organising and the dangers of state co-optation, and the concept of Immanent Revolution.
Marcelo Lopes de Souza
The Global South as a Sacrifice Zone and the illusion of sustainable development
Marcelo is an autonomist activist and professor of political ecology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He has collaborated with a number of urban movements in Brazil since the 1980s, including the ‘roofless’ workers movement and grassroots struggles against environmental injustice. Marcelo discusses the anti-ecological neofascism that is Brazil’s current political reality, and provides a left-libertarian perspective on the successes and defeats of the Brazilian left over recent decades.
Chiara Bottici
Anarchafeminism
Chiara is a feminist philosopher and writer. She is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute at the New School, New York. Her books include Imaginal Politics and The Anarchist Turn. Chiara discusses why anarchism must be feminist, the journey from individuality to transindividuality, the unity of life and the concept of somatic communism, and she recites from her Anarchafeminist Manifesto.
Vinya Ariyaratne
The Sarvodaya Movement and the Awakening of All
Vinya is the General Secretary of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka. He discusses the philosophy of Sarvodaya (the awakening of all) and its grounding in Buddhist principles, the question of human nature and his experience of spontaneous mutual aid and compassion in times of crisis and disaster, and how the movement brings about Garam Swaraj (village self-rule) in pursuit of a Sri Lankan commonwealth of village republics.
Katia Valenzuela Fuentes
Autonomous Collectives, Buen Vivir, and Prefigurative Politics in Chile
Katia is an autonomist feminist activist and assistant professor at Universidad de Concepción, Chile. She discusses capitalist-extractivism and its ‘sacrifice zones, the indigenous concept of Buen Vivir, the proliferation of autonomous collectives and prefigurative politics in Chile in recent years, and the question of revolution or reform in Chile’s current political moment.
Jeff Corntassel
Life beyond the State: from Wet'suwet'en self-determination to indigenous international relations
Jeff is Tsalagi (Cherokee Nation). He is an activist and associate professor of indigenous governance at the University of Victoria, Canada. He discusses Wet'suwet'en self-determination, settler colonisation and state oppression, provides a Cherokee perspective on the deep commons, and offers his thoughts on indigenous international relations.
Marina Sitrin
Horizontalidad: Love and Care as Affective Revolutionary Practice
Marina is an activist, Professor at Binghampton University, and a mother. She is author of Horizontalism, Everyday Revolutions, and They Can’t Represent Us! Marina discusses experiences of organising from Argentina, to Occupy, and beyond. She talks about her recent project exploring examples of ‘pandemic solidarity’ around the world, and how a practice of militant love might work to transform our struggles.
Richard J. White
Total Liberation: Cultivating more-than-human ecologies of solidarity and care
Richard is an activist and Reader in Human Geography at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Greatly influenced by anarchist praxis, his work is rooted in the intersectional contexts of social justice and Total Liberation movements. Richard discusses the theory and practice of Total Liberation, the bizarre disconnect between ‘environmental protection’ and the daily torture and murder of animals for meat, and how we might best cultivate more-than-human commons.
Federico Venturini
Social Ecology, Cultures of Resistance, and Ecologies of Solidarity and Care
Federico is an activist-researcher working at the University of Udine, Italy. He co-edited the books Your Freedom and Mine: Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish Question in Erdogan's Turkey and Social Ecology and the Right to the City: Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities. He discusses domination, freedom, democratic confederalism in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, and the possibilities for social ecology moving forward.