They Cannot Represent Us!

Authors: Dario Azzellini & Marina Sitrin

This work, for which David Harvey wrote the foreword, raises the question of what democracy should mean after mass protest movements in different locations such as Greece, Turkey, Argentina and the USA. These horizontal movements, including Occupy, take on and demand the role of implementing participatory democracy as the basis for revolutionary social change.

Written by two international activist-intellectuals and based on extensive interviews with movement participants in Spain, Venezuela, Argentina, the United States, Turkey, and elsewhere, this book is a broad portrait of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, and organizational forms advocated by new movements and Next, it examines the analytical structure of direct and participatory democracy in the historical process from Athens to Zuccoti Park. Moreover, these new movements underline that liberal democracy is not democratic today or before.

Today, it is still possible to talk about a growing rejection (non-acceptance) movement on a global scale and a movement of creation in this rejection. Azzelini and Sitrin describe this as “Millions 'No!' "They show that they do not accept it by shouting." expresses it as follows.

While Azzellini and Sitrin explore the common aspects of modern movements in the USA, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Egypt and Argentina, they do not express all the various experiences in history through a single formulation. Instead, he expresses all of the movements as elements that form the global resistance DNA of our age. They describe the movements with the keywords region, parliament, conflict, popular power, horizontalism and self-government.

Many of the concepts or notions have taken off since the 1990s, especially in Latin America. The book emerges as a very understandable and useful resource on mass politics, rejecting traditional meanings and conclusions - the shortcomings of left-wing and right-wing scholars.

As the book's title suggests, talking about rebel movements is a sensitive topic for writers and activists; In other words, a book or a critical article cannot represent us to the same extent. In other words, how can authors respect the core values of the movements while providing comprehensive insight into the global nature of these movements? The book contains interviews with movement participants. In this sense, it can be said that the book is a collective work and has taken on a more exciting form for the reader.

Additionally, in the last chapter, Azzellini included his impressions of Rojava and drew attention to its similarities with the struggle styles of mass movements in other countries.