Case Studies

In Jackson, Mississippi, a deindustrialized, majority African-American city, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is organizing to build dual power through people’s assemblies and a network of worker cooperatives: Cooperation Jackson. They also critically engage with electoral politics. In 2017, Chokwe Antar Lumumba won the mayor’s seat on the Jackson People’s Platform.

In this Bay Area working-class majority-POC town dominated by a Chevron refinery, the Richmond Progressive Alliance ran a slate of candidates that did not accept corporate contributions, organized at the grassroots level and now has a majority on the city council, winning rent control, anti-racial profiling measures, municipal I.D. cards, and the most progressive police […]

In 2014, Barcelona en Comú emerged from grassroots social movements and occupations of public spaces to organize a social movement for radical democracy centered in the city, to win power and govern in more inclusive, participatory, transparent and accountable ways. In 2015, Ada Colau, a housing rights activist, was elected as mayor, along with other […]