They can't represent us!

"From one of the key organizes of Occupy Wall Street and a leading activist in European social movements comes a book that shows a common thread in the recent upsurge in mass protests from Argentina to Greece to the Middle East to New York. The new movements, argue Marina Sitrin and Dario Azzellini, put forward a new conception of participatory democracy, challenging the idea that liberal, representative democracy--let alone the authoritarian regimes being challenged in the Middle East--is democratic, nor ever was. To make the argument and illustrate the kinds of democratic thinking being pioneered by the new movements, They Can't Represent Us! is propelled by scores of interviews with leading activists in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Asia, allowing readers entre;e to a fascinating array of protest and prefigurative movements across the world. The book provides one of the most extensive portraits of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, factory takeovers, cooperatives, and organizational forms championed by the new movements, and its truly global focus provides a kind of political travelogue of the cutting edge of global activism"-- "Here is one of the first books to assert that mass protest movements in disparate places such as Greece, Argentina, and the United States share an agenda--to raise the question of what democracy should mean. These horizontalist movements, including Occupy, exercise and claim participatory democracy as the ground of revolutionary social change today. Written by two international activist intellectuals and based on extensive interviews with movement participants in Spain, Venezuela, Japan, across the United States, and elsewhere, this book is both one of the most expansive portraits of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, and organizational forms championed by the new movements, and an analytical history of direct and participatory democracy from ancient Athens to Athens today. The new movements put forward the idea that liberal democracy is not democratic, nor was it ever"--