In 2004, organizer and arts organizer David Solnit published the anthology “Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World.” In the introduction he said, “the new radicalism looks different everywhere,” and cited the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, as a pivotal moment in his understanding of the new radicalism. “The Zapatistas held that there are multiple valid frameworks to look at the world,” and contrasted this outlook with the “cookie-cutter model” of the past, epitomized by the Soviet Union.
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The book served as an organizers guide, but the many chapters described a movement of movements that emerged in the post-Cold War era. The movements that challenged neo-liberal institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the Free Trade Area of the Americas; and the U.S. empire’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The movements that later lead to Occupy, the global climate justice movements, a labor resurgence and efforts to fight empire and genocide in Palestine and other parts of the world.
Scott talks with long time friend and comrade David Solnit (@dsolnit) about that movement of movements, the moment in the early 2000s it came out of, lessons learned and how the book still still applies to movement organizing twenty years later.
Bio//
David co-founded Art and Revolution Collective in the San Francisco Bay Area, and organized as part of the Direct Action Network in Seattle in 1999 and Direct Action to Stop the War in San Francisco in 2003. He is an arts organizer with the Climate Justice Arts Project–working to center arts organizing and narrative. He edited/co-authored “Globalize Liberation” and co-authored”The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle.”
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