Chapter Fourteen - “And What About Political Power: Is the Party Over?
A lot of this chapter is based on Judy’s experiences in trying to democratize the New Democratic Party in Canada and finding it incredibly resistant to change. She questions how the horizontal organizing explored in the rest of the book can interact with the extraordinarily hierarchal structure of most political parties. Looking at interactions between movements and parties through a balance sheet of the German Greens, and some experiments in Latin America on new kinds of political parties, she poses a number of questions about how and whether these old institutions can be transformed.
“We have more questions than answers when it comes to political parties, but certainly some of the new ways of organizing at the community and social-movement levels that are discussed in this book can give us some creative ideas about how this might happen. Who would have predicted the more than 100 percent increase in voter turnout in the 2008 U.S. primaries? Who would have thought that a campaign could raise more money in small donations online than from all the powerful political action committees that run U.S. politics? We make the road by walking, and the road to political power that will benefit the majority of people is, like every other journey, begun with the first steps.”
Related Links:
Relevant Blog Entries:
http://transformingpower.ca/en/category/book-chapters/chapter-fourteen
Advocates for Environmental Human Rights
http://www.ehumanrights.org/
Canadian Autoworkers Union
http://www.caw.ca/
COSATU
http://www.cosatu.org.za/
ETA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA
Green Party (Canada)
http://www.greenparty.ca/
Green Party (Germany)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Greens
Guelph Civic League
http://www.guelphcivicleague.ca/
Madisha, Willy
http://www.cosatu.org.za/leadewill.htm
May, Elizabeth
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/blog/7
MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra [Landless Workers' Movement])
http://www.mstbrazil.org/
Networked Politics
http://www.networked-politics.info/
New Democratic Party (Federal)
New Democratic Party (Ontario)
http://ontariondp.com/
New Politics Initiative (NPI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Politics_Initiative
Obama, Barack
www.barackobama.com
PT. See Brazil Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT])
http://www.pt.org.br
Stanford, Jim
http://www.progressive-economics.ca/author/jim-stanford/
Wainwright, Hilary
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/
Wolfe, Frieder Otto
http://www.friederottowolf.de/
World Social Forum (WSF)
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/,
http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br/?set_language=en
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