Lpn 130 Vol 26 Issue 01 Summer 2017 Introduction Trump is a clear manifestation of how rotten we have let the political system Building BUT become. Trump didn’t disenfranchise millions of voters. Trump didn’t deregu- IF late all of our industries. Trump didn’t invent corporate welfare. Trump didn’t a Municipal WE’RE allow the media to become a monopoly while abdicating it’s role as the fourth estate. But he is doubling down on these efforts and making things worse, Movement DONE everywhere. He is the result of the Right Wing led privatization of public ser- vices thats been happening over the last 4o or so years. Trump is the cherry on At the beginning of the year we WITH top of Neoliberalism gone amuck. And he is just the lewdest money grubbing released our 100 Days of Trump beneficiary of the 1%, gobbling every financial, economic, and cultural advan- issue, a salvo on how our community IT. tage they can while we sort through recovery, grasping at turds dropped from could respond to the unbelievable their platinum toilets. election of Donald J Trump. Some As his administration and the DemoPublican Party system continue nine months into his (p)Residency we to devise ways of destroying the facile protections that were put in place to find ourselves relentlessly assault- WE protect the environment, police the banks, and support the rights of workers, YOU ed by the Orange One’s rhetorical we are hunkering down here in The Community of The Future looking for actions, moral inactions, and the ex- ARE answers and strategies on how we can battle the insanity of this age. istential dread that his words cause One of these answers came to focus while researching a movement in the mediaverse. NOT most of us know nothing about. It’s called Municipalismo. Or Municipalism. This movement of movements has sprung up after decades of work GOING done by progressive activists and people looking for alternatives to Top Down governing and the effects of globalization. Their first victory took place in the TO city of Barcelona, Spain. This movement went Super Local. And their strategy is to take over city governments one at a time. And they did it. And its work- FOCUS ing. And we think something like Municipalism can work here. The recipes for taking over a city are out there on the web ( and ON printed here) and can manifest in your local school council or neighborhood WON'T, alliance or local Democratic Party organization. It’s just up to you to be pres- HIS ent, to be a part of your local movement, and investigate the potential of this evolved strategy of organizing for political power. And then you can help SHIT spread the word and organize others to help assist a progressive takeover of the political system here in Chicago and Cook County. ANYMORE. It makes sense. If we can take over one city at a time we can bring social cultural and economic justice and equality to many more segments of the population. It’s not going to be a utopia. Some people will still suck, but at least we can participate in our own local governance and be the change we BECAUSE want to see, one town, one city at a time. So this issue of Lumpen is dense and by no means comprehensive. HE It’s just an entry point into the ideas of making a Resistance City happen. Perhaps good old fashioned feet on the ground organizing will lead to the REALLY progressive Now which will defeat the oligarchic forces crushing this world. In the meantime, while we engage in our real world person to person ISN’T social organizing, Lumpen will continue to use every resource we can to net- work with our allies, amplify their ideas and present stories and inspiration THE about the hard working people all around us trying to make another world WHO possible. Listen in to our radio station, WLPN-LP 105.5 FM in Chicago. Come PROBLEM. to our space and support a fundraiser by a local community group. Help us spread the word by sharing the ideas in this edition of Lumpen Magazine. If you won’t, who will? THE PROBLEM IS WILL? US. 3 Copy Editor Editors 2 34 51 Mairead Case Ed Marszewski Introduction Radical Reform and the What Does a Alan W. Moore Contributions by Jeremiah Chiu Ed Marszewski Right to the City: Real Sanctuary City Alan W. Moore A View From Brazil Look Like Brian Mier Publisher Brian Mier Jerry Boyle Barcelona En Comú Ed Marszewski 6 Betty Marin How To Do Now Christina Sanchez Juarez Copy Editor Dan S. Wang Mairead Case Alan W. Moore 40 53 Heather M. O'Brien L U First the City, Lumpen Radio John Duda Art Direction & Design then the World! Weekly Schedule • M John McKim Studio Chew 18 Marianela D'Aprile and Jerry Boyle N The Municipalist Keefer Dunn Jim Newberry Front Cover P Keefer Dunn Ben Marcus E Manifesto 58 Marianela D'Aprile Comics Robert Herbst Comics Editor 42 Joe Tallerico 20 The Reconstruction of Comics by Photos throughout How to Win Back Democracy in America: by Jim Newberry Andy Burkholder Technology Ben Marcus Marian Frost, Josh Habdas the City En Comú: Lessons from George Porteus Guide to Building a Jackson, Mississippi ACT NOW Grant Reynolds Sales Citizen Municipal John Duda Jessica Campbell Reuben Kincaid Johnny Sampson [email protected] Platform Kriss Stress Barcelona En Comú Danielle Chenette The Boss 46 Nate Beaty Ruby Dean Kali Akuno at Rylan Thompson 29 plenaryEdit Sarah Leitten Conscripts Alan W. Moore Justin Cholewa What is the Recipe for James Ewert Jr an Illustration About a Recipe for Municipal WLPN-LP Logan Bay Movement? An 50 Jamie Trecker Interview with ZEMOS Updates from Hannah Larson Robert Herbst Leah Menzer the Streets Marian Frost John McKim Reuben Kincaid 32 An Artists' Guide to Not lumpenmagazine.org Advertising inquiries Being Complicit lumpenradio.com [email protected] lumpen.com with Gentrification Betty Marin, Heather M. O'Brien, and Christina Sanchez Juarez Lumpen Issue 130 01 Volume Summer Contents 26 2017 5 “A permanent IV drip of absolutely pure bullshit is progressively suppressing the immune system of the American state.” William Gibson @GreatDismal, May 11, 2017 In the face of government rot and citizen despair, we’re thought of Hannah Arendt. His is a strong voice for face-to-face governance talking city-building. in the sense of building organi- and constructing the “space of appearance.” zational possibility, sites of assembling and production I talked with Fred Dewey in Berlin in June. Fred is an absolutist of popular of political imagination. This has been done, time and assemblies, as he explains in The School of Public Life. That is, he believes Alan again, and today it exists already, albeit fragmented and in the right not only to meet, but to govern: direct face-to-face democracy. How W. in-cognizant of its fellows. This is the kind of world Chris Citizens’ assemblies are the spine of municipalism as Bookchin conceived Moore Carlsson described as coming into being in his 2008 it. Pull them out and you have invertebrate politics. Yet this is something book, Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicy- municipalists who adapt their program to the electoral systems of western clists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future democracies simply will not insist upon. But we citizens can. It’s something Today. that really scares power. “What is to be done?”—the classic question Municipalist platforms are also deeply informed by ecology, made of revolutionary politics, of oppressed majorities ev- urgent by the global climate crisis. Feminism, expressed through an overall erywhere when faced with the machinery of power. We governing ethic of care and stewardship for all. Open borders, “no one is ille- don’t have to build the revolutionary party with a steely gal,” protection of refugees. Care for the socially excluded and marginalized cold-blooded vanguard as Lenin commanded. Artists people. “Historic memory”—redress of old and continuing wrongs inflicted are great do-ers. We need to make the little molehills, on parts of society. the tiny initiatives that can grow together as they are to This ideological mix varies from time to time and place to place. make the new society. We need to network them so that The injustices of historic and present-day white supremacist policing and dis- they reinforce each other. And we need to put them at crimination in jobs and housing are urgent concerns for African Americans the disposal of political movements to sustain, grow, and in the USA. Protection of migrants and refugees looms large in Germany and inspire them. Greece, where the neo-fascists use prejudice to build their movements. Simi- A key political question for cities in the USA is larly, aggressive deportations of Americans from the USA is a burning issue how to synergize the forces for change. African-Ameri- for Latino/a people there. To cans who require racial justice confront not only system- ic police violence and incarceration but also historic ex- NOTES: I have not found many handbooks on doing assemblies. There clusion from housing, which is ramping up again with the is “The People’s Assembly Toolkit” published by altotrump.com, an im- migrant rights group, just after the election. Outside the intro sheet, new cycles of gentrification. Young people of all colors the guts of it is in Spanish. There is one on occupation, which the face precarious employment, massive loads of debt from student assembly of Zagreb dared to make in 2011 (“The Occupation education which should have been free, new debt from Cookbook, or the Model of the Occupation of the Faculty of Humani- ties and Social Sciences in Zagreb” (PDF online)), in consultation with health care costs, and similar exclusion from affordable Russian and Austrian comrades.