The Green Star

“The history of urban-based class struggles is stunning. The successive
revolutionary movements in Paris from 1789 through 1830 and 1848 to the Commune of 1871 constitute the most obvious nineteenth century example. Later events included the Petrograd Soviet, the Shanghai Communes of 1927 and 1967, the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the role of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War, the uprising in Cordoba in 1969, and the more general urban uprisings in the United States in the 1960s, the urban based movements of 1968 (Paris, Chicago, Mexico City, Bangkok, and others including the so called “Prague Spring;’ and the rise of neighborhood associations in Madrid that fronted the anti-Franco movement in Spain around the same time). And in more recent times we have witnessed echoes of these older struggles in the Seattle antiglobalization protests of 1999 (followed by similar protests in Quebec City, Genoa, and many other cities as part of a widespread alternative
globalization movement) . Most recently we h ave seen m ass protests in
Tahrir Square in Cairo, in Madison, Wisconsin, in the Plazas del Sol in
Madrid and Catalunya in Barcelona, and in Syntagma Square in Athens,
as well as revolutionary movements and rebellions in Oaxaca in Mexico,
in Cochabamba (2000 and 2007) and El Alto (2003 and 2005) in Bolivia,
along with very different but equally important political eruptions in
Buenos Aires in 2001 -02, and in Santiago in Chile (2006 and 2011).

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And it is not, this history demonstrates, only singular urban centers
that are involved. On several occasions the spirit of protest and revolt
has spread contagiously through urban networks in remarkable ways.
The revolutionary movement of 1848 may have started in Paris, but t he
spirit of revolt spread to Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Budapest, Frankfurt,
and many other European cities. Th e Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
was accompanied by the formation of worker’s councils and “soviets” in
Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Riga, Munich and Tur in, just as in 1968 it was
Paris, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Bangkok, Chicago, and innumerable
other cities that experienced “days of rage;’ and in some instances violent
repressions. The unfolding urban crisis of the 1960s in the United States
affected m any cities simultaneously. And in an astonishing but much underestimated moment in world history, on February 15, 2003 , several
million people simultaneously appeared on the streets of Rome (with
around 3 million, considered the largest anti-war rally ever in human
history) , Madrid, London, Barcelona, Berlin, and Athens, with lesser but
still substantial numbers (though impossible to count be cause of police
repression) in New York and Melbourne, and thousands more in nearly
200 cities in Asia (except China), Africa, and Latin America in a worldwide
demonstration against the threat of war with Iraq.  Described at
the time as perhaps one of the first expressions of global public opinion ,
the movement quickly faded, but leaves behind the sense that the global
urban network is replete with political possibilities that remain untapped
by progressive movements. Th e current wave of youth-led movements
throughout the world, from Cairo to Madrid to Santiago  to say nothing
of a street revolt in London, followed by an “Occupy Wall Street”
movement that began in New York City before spreading to innumerable
cities in the US and now around the world-suggests there is something
political in the city air struggling to be expressed.”

–  excerpted from REBEL CITIES by David Harvey order at our store and show vital and much-needed support for our projects!