After our enthusiastic conversation about the Zapitistas’ model of Participatory Democracy, we wanted to delve more into Zapatista cosmovisión (worldview) and organization by reading Subcomandante Marcos’s “I Shit On All the Revolutionary Vanguards of this Planet,” which is a response to the Basque liberation movement Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’s (ETA) advocation of vanguardist politics. We also teased out the idea of future readings about Rojava in a continuation of our exploration of democratic centralism. Therefore, we decided in anticipation to also include the Feminist Anarchist Border Opposition’s Why Misogynists Make Great Informants, which tackles misogyny and gender violence in left-activist circles and movements.
Subcomandante Marcos’s “I Shit On All the Revolutionary Vanguards of this Planet” is available for free to read on the Anarchist Library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/subcomandante-marcos-i-shit-on-all-the-revolutionary-vanguards-of-this-planet
Feminist Anarchist Border Opposition’s Why Misogynists Make Great Informants is available for free to read here: https://incite-national.org/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/
As always, we are meeting at Camas Books, 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen Territory. The next meeting is Sunday April 16 @ 6:30PM.
Our next reading will be the academic article Participatory Democracy in Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra, which covers the Zapatistas’ and Movimento Sem Terra’s (Landless Movement-MST) methods of organizing through participatory democracy, which emphasizes obligation to participate in decision making and a shared concern for autonomy.
