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TNI launched our annual State of Power reports because we believe that the issue of power is central to the struggle for social justice. It has since become our most popular report, delving into who has power, how it's exercised and how we can realise our collective power to transform society.
In this year's seventh edition of State of Power, we decided to focus on counter-power, to examine what is needed to build up the power of social movements and how it can be best harnessed.
We are thrilled with the essays and analysis we brought together from leading activists and thinkers. We welcome your thoughts and comments so please get in touch via our social media channels or by emailing stateofpower@tni.org
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| Marching forward: Women, resistance and counter-power |
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An interview with Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, Medha Patkar and Nonhle Mbuthuma
Three inspiring and courageous social movement leaders from Honduras, India and South Africa share their perspectives on how to build durable and effective popular movements.
> Read the interview |
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| 'Beneath the pavements, the beach' - or the whirlpool? Lessons of 1968 |
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Hilary Wainwright in her preview of an upcoming book argues that the revolutions of 1968 have an ambivalent legacy - they both regenerated capitalism but also experimented with forms of participation and transformative power that can and are inspiring today's social movements.
> Read online. |
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| Thinking Freedom: achieving the impossible collectively |
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Drawing on his award-winning book, Michael Neocosmos argues that real emancipation emerges out of the universalist thinking that comes from collective struggle and must not be conflated with the politics of representation whether by parties or states.
> Read online. |
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| From protest movements to transformative politics |
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Renowned Italian political activist, Luciana Castellina argues that movements are not enough to build counter-power. There is a need for a new kind of political party to mediate organized and diverse peoples and to rebuild the connective tissue that binds society and politics.
> Read online. |
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| Without translation, no hay revolución! |
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Alice Froidevaux and Eline Müller
Two radical interpreters with La Via Campesina assert that language - and thus translation and interpretation - is about access, about participation, about power. How can we bring about language justice within transnational social movements?
> Read online |
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| Building feminist counter-power: In for the long haul |
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Author of One-Dimensional Woman, Nina Power, acclaims the new feminist militancy on the streets, across the globe and in the air. Social movements should use this moment to overcome the socialization of girls and boys that has been so hard to shift in order to permanently end the bullying and harassment typified in the likes of Trump.
> Read online |
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| Flowing Movement: Building alternative water governance in Mexico |
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Gerardo Alatorre Frenk tells the inspiring story of how the Mexican government's decision to acknowledge access to water as a human right led to a massive civil society response including 99 public forums to define what good water governance looks like. What can we learn from the experience?
> Read online |
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| Madrid's Community Gardens: Where neighbourhood counter-power puts down roots |
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José Luis Fernández Casadevante Kois, Nerea Morán and Nuria del Viso report on the community garden movement that has emerged in Madrid. What if, rather than the barricade, we were to think of counter-power in terms of a space such as a community garden?
> Read online |
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| People in defence of life and territory: Counter-power and self-defence in Latin America |
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Raúl Zibechi reports on the liittle-reported rise of self-defence groups and community police forces
created across Latin America by communities to resist state and corporate violence. What do these counter-power structures look like and what we can learn from them?
>Read online |
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| Making counter-power out of madness |
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Journalist and TV presenter Laura Flanders asks how movements in the US can build counter-power out of Trumpian madness? Against the odds, a new vision is emerging that seeks to bring together a systemic critique with an embodied practice based on shared decision-making, solidarity economics and community-based approaches to prosperity and security.
> Read online |
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| Fighting for public health: How a Swedish rural community confronted neoliberal cutbacks |
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Desirée Enlund
The rural communities in the Västernorrland county of Northern Sweden are often ignored, but in 2017 their struggle to stop cutbacks in maternity and emergency care made national news. What lessons can we learn on how to build counter-power in rural areas of the Global North?
> Read online |
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You can read all the essays here
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On 30th January, TNI will also launch a visual history of 50 years of counter-power. Keep an eye out for it on our Facebook and Twitter pages. |
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