Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue General issue Lesley Wood, Irina Ceric, Laurence Cox, Radha d’Souza, Ana Margarida Esteves, Sara Motta, Jiří Navrátil, Dawn Paley, Eduardo Romanos, Heike Schaumberg, Anna Szołucha, Peter Waterman 2017 is tense and uncertain. Diagnosing the current moment, with its ecological, political and economic crises, and prescribing strategies for transcending and interrupting these crises are challenges that generate discussion and confusion. It is in these sorts of moments that Interface seems particularly relevant, as a space to “learn from each other’s struggles” as we all, in our different movements and research contexts, attempt to understand the nature of the present crisis. The issue has no particular theme, imposed from above by us, the editorial spokescouncil, but we have brought together the best of our submissions to reflect on today’s dynamics. In this issue Organically, particular clusters of pieces emerged. The first cluster evaluates particular tactics. Appropriately for the crises of the moment, David Hoffman, Danny Lundy, Amanda Anderson and Michael Lanza discuss Internet campaigning strategies with reference to the 2016 US presidential primaries. Chandra Russo’s practice note explores the complexities and reworkings of the safety pin tactic in current activist practice. In his article, Brian Mallon shows and contextualises the rise of direct action in housing activism in Dublin. Phil Hedges’ article draws on Benjamin, Jackson and Hobsbawm to discuss the challenges in writing a history of a rent strike at University College London. A second cluster of pieces considers the dynamics of movement building in particular contexts. Janine Joyce and Joseph Llewellyn discuss the successes and failures of bicultural and anarchist organising principles in a peace-building project in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Geoffrey Pleyers’ article examines how local food projects in Belgium have developed from a primarily prefigurative approach to a more institutionalised one. Niccolò Bertuzzi looks at the organisation and communication structures of the No Expo network in Milan. Laurence Cox’s paper shows the importance of social movement dynamics in the struggle against water charges in Ireland. Looking at women’s activism in Oaxaca, Alice Poma and Tommaso Gravante show how emotions are central to understanding emancipation in protest. Finally, Georgia Bekridaki and Antonios Broumas’ article explores the resurgence and potential of socially reproductive commons in the Greek crisis. While many of these pieces involved a favourite topic of Interface, movement learning, two pieces focused particularly on this idea. Thembi Luckett, Shirley Walters and Astrid von Kotze recover the long history of popular education in South Africa for today’s movements. Meanwhile Jeffrey Rubin and Emma 1 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue Solokoff-Rubin discuss the dialogue they constructed across borders between Brazilian women’s movement activists and US students. Given the current moment, it is not surprising that we also have articles on the repression faced by activists. In this issue we publish an interview with assassinated Mexican activist Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco by Kara Andrade, Ernesto Castañeda and Luis Rubén Díaz-Cepeda. Stefano Boni’s event analysis discusses successful resistance to building a prison in Venezuela (in Spanish). Each issue, we also receive a significant number of submissions on environmental movements. This issue, Andreas Bieler’s article assesses resistance to neoliberalism in the European Citizen’s Initiative “Water and sanitation are a human right”. Matthias Schmelzer and Dennis Eversberg analyse the political orientations of the movement for sustainable degrowth in Europe. Lastly, linking a broad range of movements, there is also a short introduction to the new activist/scholar oral history project on People’s Global Action. Within this open issue, we have experimented with a new format. Our special section, guest-edited by Katia Valenzuela-Fuentes, Dominika V. Polanska and Anne Kaun, brings together a number of activist/scholar pieces on the theme of “The right to housing in theory and practice: going beyond the West”. Thanks to Jiři, Ania and Alice for their assistance with the editing process. This section opens with its own introduction by the guest editors. Next, Joanna Kostka and Katarzyna Czarnota’s discusses the potential for engaged scholarship on the basis of research in Poznan. Bálint Misetics discusses the complexities of organising with homeless people in Hungary. Ana Vilenica (with Ana Džokić and Marc Neelan / Who Builds the City) maps the experience and potential of housing activism in Serbia. Marta Solanas’ Spanish-language piece discusses cooperative housing and counter-hegemony in Uruguay and beyond. Klemen Ploštajner asks about neoliberal ideology and the challenges facing housing activism in Slovenia. Andrea Aureli and Pierpaolo Mudu’s article discusses the Italian “anomaly” and residential squatting as a mode of political agency. The special section closes with the transcription of an activist panel bringing together people from organisations involved in struggles over housing in Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Mexico. As usual, we have a bumper crop of book reviews, collected by Bjarke and Dawn. We have reviews of Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (Elva Orozco); Andy Blunden’s The Origins of Collective Decison Making (Bonnie Nardi); Andrew Lamas, Todd Wolfson and Peter Funke’s The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements (Raphael Schlembach); Nicholas Hildyard’s Licenced Larceny: Infrastructure, Financial Extraction and the Global South (Alexander Dunlap); Javier Sicilia’s El Deshabitado (Andrew Smolski); William Carroll’s Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice (Andrew Kettler); Gladys Tzul Tzul’s Sistemas de Gobierno Comunal Indígena: Mujeres Y Tramas de Parentesco En Chuimeq’ena’ (Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera, in Spanish); William Carroll and Kanchan Sarker’s A 2 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue World to Win: Contemporary Social Movements and Counter-Hegemony (Laurence Cox); Robert Press’ Ripples of Hope: How Ordinary People Resist Repression without Violence (Richa Biswas); and Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar’s Marxism in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle (Lika Rodin). Also in this issue you will find our first event announcement, for the 6th international “Workers’ Economy” meeting (Aug 30 - Sept 2) in the Hotel Bauen cooperative, Buenos Aires and an invitation to submit event announcements. Finally we have details of another social movements journal, Moving the Social, published by the Institute for Social Movements (Bochum, Germany). Our current call for papers (for issue 10/1, to be published in May 2018) is on “Political parties, trade unions and social movements: emancipatory reconfigurations of popular organisation”, with a special section dedicated to Peter Waterman’s activist-scholar life, work and legacy. Peter was still working on the main call for papers when he was taken into hospital. The deadline will be November 1 2017. Updates from editors As you can see, this issue brings together a broad set of movements from a diverse (although always incomplete) range of struggles and territories. Starting from these experiences and pieces, we as editors then work to strengthen and produce the issue. We thought it might be interesting for our readers and ourselves to know more about the names behind the emails of the editors. Given the decentralized, and voluntary nature of the project, many of us have never met “in real life”, and we don’t know each other well. Here are a few words about what we’re up to, from many, but not all of our crew (texts from late May). 3 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue In alphabetical order… Irina Ceric. I am currently involved in skill-building a renewed network of land defender allies in the territory known as British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. As you may have heard, Canada's photogenic but deeply neoliberal PM has approved numerous pipelines, and resistance continues to build. I am also currently conducting interviews across Canada and the US with activist legal collective members as part of a research project on radical legal support, social movement knowledge production and legal consciousness. Laurence Cox. I’m involved in the international outreach work for opposition to the G20 meeting in Hamburg this July. The local police are throwing their weight about and seriously irritating a lot of Hamburgers. It’s an important protest at a European level in that Blockupy are hoping to use it to rebuild networks of movements against austerity across the continent. There is also a bit of a reconnection internationally around challenging the neoliberal summits, with “BRICS from below” and companer@s in Argentina who are planning for a WTO summit this December and the G20 next year. Radha D'Souza. It is May Day in London. India Matters UK is on its first protest march since it was founded two months ago to oppose fascism in India. On its first march IMUK is demanding the release of Prof. Saibaba and his comrades sentenced to life imprisonment for demanding social justice for the rural poor and for setting aside the sentences handed out to 13 trade unionists in MarutiSuzuki's Manesar plant in India. In the past my comrades and I went from one solidarity campaign to the next. Fascists in India are digging their heels in deep, so are we. Ana Margarida Esteves is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, ISCTEIUL. She is conducting Participatory Action Research with transition initiatives, solidarity economy networks and integral cooperatives in Southern Europe and Latin America. She is also active in the anti-austerity movement in Portugal and at the European Level, as well as in the European Commons Assembly. Sara Motta. I, with others, are dreaming into being a radical community education collective The Communiversity Newcastle, and a sacred shared living community here in Newcastle, NSW. We are also trying to keep spaces of meaningful emancipatory scholarship alive in the University at a time of increasingly cruel restructuring. I am writing my second book, a decolonial feminist non-manifesto 'Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation, and 4 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue visioning with mother-scholars in Colombia, Australia and Brazil a participatory project 'La Politica de la Maternidad/ Reading Motherhood Politically'. Jiří Navrátil. I´m currently doing a research project on progressive and illiberal political activism in Czech cities and teaching at two universities. Besides this I’ve been organising a series of discussions and meet-ups with former global justice activists and autonomists over my recent book on the transformation of alterglobalization activism in Central Europe. Dawn Paley. Yet another difficult week in Mexico. A young woman named Lesvy Berlin Orsorio was killed and her body was left tied to a phone booth on the campus of Mexico's National University (UNAM). The Public Prosecutor of Mexico City sent out a series of tweets after Berlin Osorio's murder was made public, noting that she was not a student and that she had been drinking earlier in the day. This follows a pattern of victim blaming common in Mexico. Seven women are murdered every day in this country, and Berlin Osorio's murder sent a strong message, generating a great deal of fear and rage among my compañeras at grad school. ¡Nos queremos vivas! Eduardo Romanos. I write this editorial with one foot out of Interface after two and a half years of learning. I have only words of gratitude for the authors I have worked with, for my colleagues from the Western Europe team and for the rest of the editors. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this my first experience as an editor. I am glad to have been part of a journal that is a reference for both activists and scholars of social movements around the globe. And I'm sorry to leave it, but my hours are limited. Acting as an editor is an interesting task and at times very rewarding (especially when you see the articles you have been working with published) but also demanding (this shouldn’t discourage anyone interesting in joining the project – believe me: it's worth it). Now I will continue to play the role of editor in another journal, which I see as an ally rather than a rival. At the moment I am also the coordinator of a Master’s Degree in applied sociology at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid (if anyone is interested, admission is now open!). And I keep on teaching and researching social movements. Among other projects, I am still devoting much time to understanding the great, transformative adventure (still underway) which many of us joined six years ago: the so-called indignados movement. Alongside that, another adventure has transformed me even more for the past three and a half years: my little boy. Heike Schaumberg. I am writing these lines having just attended yet another multitudinal demonstration in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. Today’s mobilisation was against the “2x1”, an invalidated law that aimed to discourage unnecessarily protracted detention, and which was shamefully revived in a 5 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue recent High Court case but to benefit those standing trial for crimes against humanity committed during the country’s brutal military dictatorship (19761983). This case would have set a precedent that could have seen many of those responsible for genocide walk free. But public outcry persuaded Congress to quickly repudiate this law just hours prior to the protest. Regardless, the multitude turned out to protest and celebrate its victory. It followed a busy month of a militant teacher’s strike, mass mobilisations against gendered violence, evictions of workers’ cooperatives, redundancies, and a powerful general strike on 6 April. This energetic show of defiance affirms that we can change the world! Let that message ring loud and clear at capitalism’s planned and upcoming fiestas hosted by the City of Buenos Aires: the WTO meeting this coming December, and the G20 and G30 next year. Bjarke Skærlund Risager. Having recently moved from one continent to another with my young family, I'm trying to get my bearings in a new (political) climate. My PhD dissertation on the spatial production of European social movements in the context of economic and democratic crises is on hold while I'm on parental leave with my one-year-old. Ania Szolucha. I am working on the ground to document the impacts of shale gas developments in Lancashire, UK which, most recently, include the increase in policing with all its effects, lock-ons and other direct actions at the fracking site that is currently under construction. I am also trying to assemble a comprehensive history of shale gas in Poland. Lesley Wood. Last night I spent the night sleeping on the concrete outside the Toronto Mayor's condo building. The organization I work with is trying to put pressure on the city to better fund both homeless shelters and support affordable housing. Like many 'global' cities, Toronto has become affordable only for the rich. Farewells and welcomes With this issue we are bidding farewell to no fewer than four Interface editors: Elizabeth Humphrys, Alice Mattoni, Richard Pithouse and Eduardo Romanos. Elizabeth was a founding editor whose contributions were central to keeping the journal going, and whose beautiful covers have been the first thing most readers have seen. Alice has been a long-time member of the western European group as well as lead editor on numerous special issues. Richard’s connection with the struggles of South African shanty-town dwellers and their razor-sharp theorising has brought a very important dimension to Interface. Lastly Eduardo’s involvement in the western European group and his sharp understanding of a wide range of different social movements has been a great 6 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue contribution. We are immensely grateful to everything they have brought to the journal, and many of us will continue working with them in other contexts. Meanwhile, Dawn Paley - radical journalist, media activist and researcher - has joined us as a book reviews editor and is already bringing a huge amount to the project; and Alexander Waters – activist and PhD student – has joined the Australia / New Zealand group as well as helping with our website work. We had a fantastic response to our call for new editors for the western European group, and are working with a number of people who will hopefully join us as full editors by our next issue. North American editors wanted Interface’s editorial collective for the US and Canada is looking for one new editor to join the current editors, Irina Ceric and Lesley Wood. We handle articles sent in by people across a very wide range of social movements, academic disciplines; find reviewers when needed and take part in special issue projects from time to time as well as helping to run the journal as a whole. Interface is a voluntary project: we see this as an important contribution to helping movements learn from each other and to develop dialogue between researchers and movements outside the constraints of conventional academic journals. We’re looking for someone familiar with and involved in US movements (Irina and Lesley are both based in Canada) and who is excited about working with words and ideas; ideally scholar/activists who have time and enthusiasm to contribute, but we’re also open to people outside academia altogether who have strong writing/editing/theoretical skills. We’re hoping to find people who complement the existing editors in terms of movement interests and involvement, languages, countries and disciplines/intellectual traditions (we don’t have to agree on everything!). We’re informal and comradely but also organised in how we work together. If you’re interested, please email both Irina and Lesley (ljwood AT yorku.ca and irina.ceric AT gmail.com) by July 20th with a few paragraphs about yourself and why you’d like to do this / how you see it fitting into what you want to do politically or intellectually. Do also please let us know how we can get the best sense of your work – a CV, a website link, a sample of your writing… 7 Interface: a journal for and about social movements Volume 9 (1): 1 - 8 (2017) Editorial General issue Peter Waterman, 1936-2017 Finally, and sadly, not long after writing his own contribution to these editors’ updates, our long-standing international / transnational editor Peter Waterman died at the age of 81. This editorial is followed by his obituary, but it seems appropriate to close this editorial, the last one he will co-sign, with his own, typically casual update written in between medical appointments: Peter Waterman. I am less active academically (being long retired) and politically (in the sense of activism) than cyberspacially. This is firstly with the free, online social movements journal, Interface. Cyberia, as I call it, is the promised land - or cloud - for us 80-year-olds. And whilst it is also a 'disputed terrain', Cyberia permits a range and flexibility of relationships that has never previously existed. Just more or less completed my third compilation of scattered papers which, like the two previous ones, will be available at a token price or free on line. Oh, and Cyberia welcomes the under-80s also. 8