>Book presentation at the School of Geography, University of Leeds.
Please Circulate.
>------------------------------------------
>
>
>Book presentation:
>
>_THE NEXT REVOLUTION: POPULAR ASSEMBLIES AND THE PROMISE OF DIRECT
>DEMOCRACY _
>
>WITH THE EDITOR DEBBIE BOOKCHIN
>
>5-7PM, 9TH MARCH 2016
>
>SEMINAR ROOM 1, SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
>
> From Athens and Madrid to New York and Rio, recent mass movements around
>the world have challenged the politics of austerity and authoritarianism
>with expressions of real democracy. But how can the excitement on the
>streets achieve permanence as a lasting, powerful social movement?
>Murray Bookchin was deeply concerned with this question. A social
>theorist and activist who first introduced the concept of ecology into
>the radical lexicon and whose seminal books _Post-Scarcity Anarchism_
>and _The Ecology of Freedom_, influenced a wide range of political
>thinkers and social movements, Bookchin returned to this issue over and
>over again during his life. While some place their hopes in radical
>political parties, like Syriza or Podemos, Bookchin was convinced that
>only through directly-democratic councils organized at the local level,
>could radical movements institutionalize the impulse for democracy and
>freedom and build a true counter-veiling power to that of the
>corporate-controlled nation-state. He believed that the organizational
>foundation needed to fundamentally change society had to occur at the
>grassroots level and be part of an educational program that would allow
>every individual to rediscover the meaning of civic participation and
>citizenship.
>
>His daughter, Debbie Bookchin will discuss these ideas as Bookchin
>presented them in a series of essays recently collected in a new book
>called The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct
>Democracy (Verso Books 2015). She will also discuss the way in which
>these ideas are finding expression in the Rojava Revolution underway
>among the Kurds of northern Syria and southeastern Turkey and the
>importance of activists worldwide supporting this vision of a new
>society. Debbie Bookchin, is an award-winning author and journalist
>whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York
>Times, Huffington Post, and numerous other publications. She also served
>as Press Secretary to U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders
>from 1991-1994.
>
>Organized by the Cities and Social Justice research cluster
>
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