Blog on New Politics

In many instances, political power enables our self-development; however, power is also a source of oppression. Power without its internal state of oppression is impossible to imagine. Although power enables our capacity for self-fashioning in some respects, in many instances, it has become an obsolete, hopeless institution for the vast majority of people. Power is, in some instances, inflicting some of the social problems and injustices. Since power is not always liberatory as we idealistically think, we must think of ourselves as the source and end of any political power. We say to the people that if you lose hope in power, you will find it in us.  We try to redirect power toward themselves so that they can grow certain capabilities required for a good life. We encourage people to create themselves as subjects, extending them, and, in the process, absorbing the power as their own living force, rather than being oppressed by it. Our social movement intends to reawaken “we the 99%” to the fact that no one empowers you other than yourself and liberates you from oppression. Political freedom and justice are tautologies, mere redundant statements that our politicians never tire of repeating. But, we believe freedom and justice are practice, not mere statements.

We believe that society can be run truly democratically through networks of grassroots collectives, without centralized power. They can self-organize and self-fashion their social, political, and economic lives by working together. We strongly believe that creating a popular, self-organizing economy is imperative for people to reduce their dependence on power, as it directly relates to the comprehensive transformation of existing social relations, moving them away from poverty, injustice, and toward a hopeful political future. We believe that creating a self-reliant economy enables communities to produce their own food, sell it, generate revenue, and fund their children’s free daycare and clinics, thereby bypassing the corporate exploitative structures of the current economy.  We believe that democracy can flourish only when the people come together and fulfill their local societal needs. We know we can’t fulfill all needs as necessities are limitless, but we can try to fulfill what we can.

We often say creating a self-sufficient cooperative economy is not just an economic activity, but it also furnishes an instance of people practicing their idea of freedom and justice, or being political, and participating in politics. Therefore, we aim to experiment with a new economic model, considering some aspects of the prevailing capitalist/state model as destructive to autonomous forms of life. We would like to revive aspects of the pre-capitalist communal economic system, based on subsistence, self-determination, cooperation, and the common good. Let’s say our movement aims to help a community-based/participatory form of the economy thrive at the border of capitalism and the state, while addressing social issues such as justice and rights for all, equal access to food, shelter, health, and education, as well as environmental protection. In its most developed form, our community begins to manage its own economic resources, which are neither collectivized nor privatized; instead, they are made common.

When communities self-organize and self-manage their social issues, we believe such acts free people from the inhumanity of politics and power. We believe we, the people, are the government of our own! This is the motto of our movement. This type of organizational form best expresses the desires of minorities or the oppressed and their creative responses to oppression. There are no homogenization and subjectivization processes in our model of community, but only cooperation, friendship, and collectivity. People come together in an “alliance,” or a “collective.” They find each other as brother and sister. S/he is a member of a community of friends who come together in his/her ability to work to realize political hope–a social individual liberated from the domination of power in terms of labor and identity. They create all the spheres of social life by themselves.

We don’t want to challenge anyone. We are not different from ordinary people. We are a multitude. We’re not just one. We’re MAGA, we are Antifa; we’re Republicans; we’re democrats; we’re independent. We’re Christian, we’re Muslim, we’re Buddhists. We’re men; we’re women; we’re gay. We’re Whites; we’re Blacks; we’re Latinos! We understand truth as perspectivism or a socio-cultural linguistic form of reality, but we will strive to forge an ethical version of truth that can promote the common good for all Americans in our country. We’ve no other aim or agenda! We are not against the State or capitalism or anything. Nonetheless, we intend to build a potent civil counter-power without becoming a threat to the State or otherwise. We believe we, the people, can shake the world without revolution! We can hope for another world to blossom by reconstructing society for 99%. Our group’s main mantra is: if your rights are denied, defend yourself; if you are segregated, organize yourself; if you are denied opportunity, create yourself; if you are not recognized, recognize yourself.

In conclusion, we aim to expand the concept of politics by incorporating people’s democratic organizations and decision-making power. In this experimentation, there are two determining factors: the notion of democracy as people’s power in society (rather than as a form of government), and the non-dependent relationship with the government. Our group represents a social and political movement based on developing people’s autonomous competencies. It can be called democracy in action: learning self-government by doing it, and by taking direct responsibility for one’s life and the place in which one lives. We might refer to such initiatives as projects in which autonomy is pursued through experimentation. When an entire community organizes itself toward self-development, affective relations become privileged over dominant power relations, marginality becomes a privileged position, and sovereignty, understood as a dominant power, is reduced to a symbolic level with varying significance over people’s lives. We believe that people’s struggle for self-organization and self-growth opens up a discussion about the power of the nonpower—self-sovereignty in the non-sovereign. This discussion is extremely important for our model of politics for future generations. Our shared vision of a self-governing and self-managing democratic commune, along with its signature community-run kitchen project, is something we cherish in our hearts and promise to support as long as it takes.