The international municipalist movement

From this article:

"The municipalist movement is made up of an ecosystem of organizations working within and beyond electoral politics at local level. It’s a movement defined as much by how it does politics as by its goals, and it is this insistence on the need to do things differently that gives municipalism its unique strength in the current context.

"Municipalism works at the local scale. In an age of xenophobic discourses that exclude people based on national or ethnic criteria, municipalism constructs alternative forms of collective identity and citizenship based on residence and participation. Municipalism is pragmatic and goal-based: in a neoliberal system that tells us ‘there is no alternative’, municipalism proves that things can be done differently through small, but concrete, victories, like remuncipalizing basic services or providing local ID schemes for undocumented immigrants. Municipalism allows us to reclaim individual and collective autonomy; in response to citizen demands for real democracy, municipalism opens up forms of participation that go beyond voting once every few years."

"Up until now, international connections between these movements have been mostly limited to bilateral exchanges on organizing tactics or policy debates. [...] This matters, because the consolidation and expansion of municipalism globally could determine the ability of any individual platform to meet its goals over the long-term. [...] Only a strong, networked response will be capable of providing a counterweight to central government and corporate power in these areas."