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10 Jan, 8 tweets, 4 min read
The 300,000+ indigenous Mayans who make up the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ) in Chiapas, Mexico have one of the most advanced systems of democratic, consensus-based governance in the world.

Here are some clips from “People Without Faces” (2016) that explain.
“Suggest, but do not impose.

Represent, but do not replace.

Build, but do not ruin.

Obey, but do not dictate.

Descend to the people, but do not dominate.

Persuade, but do not defeat.

Serve the others, but not yourself.”
“If there is some profit remaining from the work, the representative gathers all of the families of the support base, and they make a decision on how to use that profit, where to invest it.”
“Democracy, for us, is very distinct from the ‘democracy’ of the corrupt system, because in the corrupt system, ‘democracy’ only exists during elections.

For us, democracy is a daily routine.”
Please view the documentary “People Without Faces” (2016) in full below.

This is an extremely valuable resource for anyone who is serious about understanding and practicing prefigurative organization.

“... in 2013 and 2014, about 6,000 people went to Zapatista communities to learn about the EZLN’s organized struggle and the construction of autonomy.

[These] were the study materials used by the students in that first level of the Zapatista School.”

radiozapatista.org/?page_id=20294…
Accounts to follow:

• @notienlacezap

• @rzapatistadf

• @apoyoalCIG

• @ChiapasSchools

• @RinconZapatista

• @CNI_Mexico

• • •

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More from @BlackSocialists

Black Socialists in America Profile picture
6 Jan
For years, Liberals, left-Liberals (“progressive” Social Democrats), and baby Leftists have looked at us as too “radical” or “unrealistic.”

Now it is becoming more clear to many that things are going to get more and more “radical” and “surreal,” whether they want them to or not.
Anyone who has studied 20th-century German history knows *exactly* what is happening right now.

Anyone who has studied events all throughout Latin America within the last century knows *exactly* what is happening right now.

Not only is it not shocking...

It has been predicted.
Get with the program.

The program is #DualPower.

It’s not just one thing. It’s not just one tool.

It’s every tool in the toolkit.

And it’s grounded in principles of cooperation, communalism, direct democracy, consensus, prefigurative politics, internationalism, and much more.
Read 6 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
26 Dec 20
Informal hierarchies will develop in movements for systems change, but there should be zero tolerance for attempts to gatekeep in these movements.

Be skeptical of those taking on “organizer” or “activist” as an identity under broader organization and then expressing entitlement.
True social revolution is the culmination of many different social processes that are catalyzed as a result of many different actions in many different places. Not all of these social processes are catalyzed through actions tied to people or forces grounded in Left values either.
There are also many areas in which people must move in order to help others self-organize and cooperate; there is no one space to “organize,” and no one network through which people develop new social relations.

No one person or group can have a monopoly on new social relations.
Read 7 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
27 Nov 20
Something that must be understood:

The term “dual power” was coined by Lenin in 1917, but most of the core conceptual underpinnings for this term were spoken to by Proudhon in 1851, over half a century earlier (please see here: panarchy.org/proudhon/econo…).

This is worth unpacking.
Let’s start with Lenin’s first use of the term in 1917 (see here: marxists.org/archive/lenin/…) when he began to observe workers self-organizing + self-governing, cultivating power that ran parallel to the power of the Russian Provisional Government set up after Nicholas II abdicated.
While Lenin emphasized characteristics of the soviets and their use of power that we’d certainly admire today, this was, for him, ultimately contextualized around the idea of this power being used to develop state power (as opposed to making the state obsolete and destroying it).
Read 12 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
21 Nov 20
Please stop using “Communism” as a synonym for centralized economic planning under State Capitalism (aka “authoritarian Social Democracy”).

As people all across the political spectrum (Left or otherwise) continue to do this, they render the term/concept even more useless.
Communism is good.

No, it is not what exists or has existed in most of the territories most of the world points to and calls “Communist.” And no, just because a political entity paints itself red and calls itself “Communist” does not make it good (same for any other Left label).
A communist society is a classless, moneyless, stateless, post-scarcity society where the means of production are democratically controlled by the community for the benefit of all.

Wage labor is non-existent, and production is planned for human needs, rather than private profit.
Read 5 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
6 Nov 20
“If the end result of a working-class revolution in the United States is the continued domination of non-white people by white ‘revolutionary leaders’ and a Left-wing [white supremacist] government, then we will make another revolution...”

– Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Read the entire thread that the tweet below is from.

There are multiple things being conflated and misunderstood on this topic:

1) Race and ethnicity are not the same thing, although they are both socially constructed.

2) There is a distinction to be made between nationhood and nation-state when discussing the term “nationalism.”
Read 11 tweets
Black Socialists in America Profile picture
30 Oct 20
Don’t stop talking about Armenia.
Armenians feel alone in this moment.

Kurds felt alone this time last year.

For them, the common enemy is the Turkish nation-state.

For oppressed folks worldwide, there are even more common enemies.

That’s why our fight must begin with global poor and working-class solidarity.
We *need* to build a new, militant, internationalist force that is united in a politics of transcendence.

A force united in moving to transcend capitalist relations.

A force united in moving to transcend the nation-state model.

A force united in moving to transcend patriarchy.
Read 4 tweets

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