[Antiracism] Another Kind of Politics: Community Power, Autonomy, Zapatismo, and the US

[Marc Rodrigues]

Another Kind of Politics: Community Power, Autonomy, Zapatismo, and the US

An interactive workshop and discussion facilitated by the Snails Pace Collective*

Thursday, March 2, 6PM in Campus Center 917

“What we want in the world is to tell all of those who are resisting and
fighting in their own ways and in their own countries that you are not alone,
that we, the Zapatistas, even though we are very small, are supporting you, and
we are going to look at how to help you in your struggles and to speak to you in
order to learn, because what we have, in fact, learned is to learn.”
— Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona

The Zapatistas' Sixth Declaration calls on all anti-capitalists in Mexico to
come together to build this other kind of politics, a politics that is outside
the electoral system, one that is responsible to the people.

What does this mean for us in the United States? 
This workshop will ask just this question. 

Starting with an info session on Zapatismo today, we hope to open dialogues
about community power and autonomy in the contexts of our own forms of
resistance.  The current projects of the Zapatistas provide inspiration for this
dialogue towards international networks of anti-capitalist struggle.  

Come tell us what you think, ask questions, sprout ideas.  
Come talk with us and other members of your community.

Thursday, March 2, 6PM in Campus Center 917

*Snails Pace Collective is a collective made up of people from all over the US,
students and anti-capitalist organizers with diverse experiences and origins. We
are musicians, dancers, muralists, writers, photographers, cooks, friends,
compañeros who came together in September of 2005 under the ideals of the Mexico
Solidarity Network to study Mexican social movements. In our four months in
Mexico, we created relationships with indigenous communities in rebellion,
displaced peoples in rebel refugee camps, empowered campesinos, maquila workers,
ex-braceros, families of the disappeared, and urban resistance movements, with
whom we now stand in firm solidarity. At each encounter and exchange we have
been asked pointedly and also implicitly to return to our communities and share
what we have seen and apply the lessons to our own forms of struggle. This
workshop is our response.

“
laugh, compañeros, and we have to laugh because what we’re going to do is very
serious.”
— Subcomandante Marcos


---Background--- 

“On January 1, 1994 the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) rose up
in arms in the name of democracy, liberty and justice. They have since been
organizing internally to create participatory governing structures and
autonomous health and education services for the indigenous people of Chiapas,
Mexico. On the 19th of June 2005 the EZLN declared a Red Alert throughout
Zapatista territory and mobilized to protect meetings held in Zapatista
communities. Out of these meetings came the Sexta Declaracion de la Selva
Lacandona. This declaration called for all anti-capitalist groups in Mexico to
come together to create a national project called La Otra Campaña (The Other
Campaign). This campaign directly challenges the foundations of the presidential
election to be held in 2006 by creating a national network of permanently
mobilized groups that exists independent of any state structure and offers an
alternative to the party/electoral system. 

As US organizers we respond to the Sexta by recognizing our responsibility to
create our own sustainable and accountable alternatives to electoral politics.
We will begin this process by facilitating an info session and conversation
about the Sexta Declaracion and the Otra Campaña and their meanings for us as
organizers.  Because the homogenizing political system of the US disregards the
diverse needs of those that exist within it, we propose this workshop as a
conversation about another kind of politics, which reaches across our diverse
range of struggles, looking specifically at the Otra Campaña as an example of
how we can begin this process. We hope to demonstrate how our work complements
the work of those around us, to reaffirm and build networks of political actors
who share this vision of a system which invites direct participation.”

-The Snail's Pace Collective 


---Further Background & Reading---

Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona:
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/especiales/2/

What is the Sixth Zapatista Declaration?:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1527.html

The Other Journalism With The Other Campaign:
http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo/

Chiapas Independent Media Center: http://chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/

Centro de Documentación sobre Zapatismo: http://www.nodo50.org/cedoz/index.htm