Values and Approach
We hold the view that what must be born, what must come next will likely, as we have seen time and time again in history, come from the most unlikely.
Even now, we continue to believe that ordinary people, those often counted out, can indeed make history. At the very least, we can be protagonists in our own lives and communities. Amidst so much need for big change, the first or the next step gets us a little closer. It's the spark that powers us to keep going. This toolkit is offered in the spirit of the spark, the first or the next step, towards the promise to make change in our communities and equally as important to transform ourselves.
People First
We engage in policy with our gente to build power and transform the public sphere. This isn’t possible without an organized base of people in action and demanding change. A politics of the people can open up space in government to reclaim what is ours and build something new. This doesn’t depend on being able to play the game of politics, but how we organize to make demands and transform what is possible. Together we can implement new ways of doing politics that puts people over profits, based on co-governance, solidarity, community feminisms and self-determination, creating new links between the state, democracy and our communities.
Although the state and government are wealthy, our communities do not usually get to see that funding, and instead we always seem to pay the price. Now, it’s more important than ever to reclaim the concept of the “public” which includes all of our gente and all the money that has been accumulated from our labor. We all have a right to housing, healthcare, livable incomes, public spaces, and much more. Our organizing and policy work should address the barriers that deny, delay, or restrict their access within our communities.
Nuestro Horizonte es el Buenvivir
Ultimately our political horizon is el Buenvivir: self-determination for our communities and our right to live with dignity. We are clearing a path that does not reinforce the status quo and instead leads us toward the abolition of the systems that harm us. We need strong demands that are grounded in our reality, but that also remind us of our political horizon and what is possible beyond our current moment. While our local wins shouldn’t set us back or compromise our ability to keep fighting, we can’t wait for the perfect moment to pass the perfect policy, because we will be waiting forever. Fighting for el Buenvivir requires us to do our best to build today, the communities that we want to live in tomorrow, one step at a time. This is a practice that prefigures how we want to live tomorrow through new models of living and relating to each other, starting in the here and now.
The Power of Here
In this toolkit, we are concerned with municipal work as our site of struggle while keeping an eye towards the federal level– what we do locally also shapes the national landscape. Tangible victories at the local level have shown us and will continue to show people how participation in politics can change our lives. Locally where we have bases of people, our communities can see their impact towards winning real changes and thus transform the relationship of power between different levels of government and the community. Too often cities and local governments fail to recognize what can be done to address the issues impacting our communities. They maintain that issues like immigration and reproductive justice are federal issues and there is not much they can do about them. This toolkit pushes back on that assumption and explores what’s possible when we recapture what’s local and build the kinds of cities and localities that guarantee our rights. It’s important for us to be knowledgeable about our local budgets, infrastructure, and policy as we push for our localities to do more.
Sin, Contra, Desde
There is no one way or dogma to make life better for our communities. Our problems are systemic, rooted in systems that are complex and constantly changing. We need a multiplicity of strategies for making change that draw inspiration from and weave links across places and experiences. Sin/Contra/Desde are organizing strategies to build power by working outside, against, and from within the state:
Sin el estado is work that is created by communities themselves, under their control, to build alternatives that go beyond convention and status quo. When the market and the state are unable or unwilling to satisfy our people’s needs, these projects are prefigurative models of the tomorrow we want to see, and are working on today.
Contra el estado means we challenge power, make demands, and expose harms within the current system through campaigns, direct action, narrative work, and more.
Desde el estado work is where we contend for space and power within the systems of government already in place. We strive to transform the way governance works, to deepen democracy so our people can actively participate in decision making spaces, and so that elected representatives move together with organized communities to move policy demands, and access public resources for the common good.
