Autonomy: an idea whose time has come

..here's more on the kurds.

Building Democracy without the State

“When people first came to our house a few years ago to ask if our family would like to participate in the communes, I threw stones at them to keep them away,” laughs Bushra, a young woman from Tirbespiye, Rojava. The mother of two belongs to an ultra-conservative religious sect. Before, she had never been allowed to leave her home and used to cover her entire body except her eyes.

“Now I actively shape my own community,” she says with a proud and radiant smile. “People come to me to seek help in solving social issues. But at the time, if you had asked me, I wouldn’t even have known what ‘council’ meant or what people do in assemblies.”

Today, around the world, people resort to alternative forms of autonomous organization to give their existence meaning again, to reflect human creativity’s desire to express itself as freedom. These collectives, communes, cooperatives and grassroots movements can be characterized as the people’s self-defense mechanisms against the encroachment of capitalism, patriarchy and the state.

At the same time, many indigenous peoples, cultures and communities that faced exclusion and marginalization have protected their communalist ways of living until this day. It is striking that communities that protected their existence against the evolving world order around them are often described in negative terms, as “lacking” something—notably, a state. The positivist and deterministis tendencies that dominate today’s historiography render such communities unusual, uncivilized, backward. Statehood is assumed to be an inevitable consequence of civilization and modernity; a natural step in history’s linear progress....

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Democratic Confederalism in Rojava

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), like many national liberation movements, initially thought that the creation of an independent state would be the solution to violence and oppression. However, with the changing world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the movement began to develop a fundamental self-criticism as well as a criticism of the dominant socialist politics of the time, which was still very much focused on seizing state power. Towards the end of the 1990s the PKK, under the leadership of Abdullah Öcalan, began to articulate an alternative to the nation state and state socialism.

Upon studying the history of Kurdistan and the Middle East, as well as the nature of power, the current economic system and ecological issues, Öcalan came to the conclusion that the reason for humanity’s “freedom problem” was not statelessness but the emergence of the state. In an attempt to subvert the domination of the system that institutionalized itself across the globe over the span of 5,000 years as a synthesis of patriarchy, capitalism and the nation state, this alternative paradigm is based on the very opposite—women’s liberation, ecology and grassroots democracy.

iyraste

..if you look at the unist'ot'en camp facebook page at the top you see a pick of wolverine in honour of his passing. but before that the pic was of naomi klein sitting around with the camp and meeting. the camp has many many supporters and crowd funding. this is autonomy. this is leadership. the camp is connected to larger struggles via the first peoples. and also via klein who is connected to other movements both here in canada and internationally. and this is tugging at only one thread. there are thousands if not tens of millions of threads today globally.

..what i believe is going on is brand new. it's a system change and we have never been here before. were exploring our options. we are creating. there is no way you can control that. there will be those that may try but things are so scattered and autonomous it’s an impossible task. you join in because it’s like a snowball rolling down the hill. you build towards autonomy wherever it is you live. i don’t know how this fits with your or karitzis's outlook.

The Commons Collaborative Economy explodes in Barcelona

Cities have personalities – they’re often described as we would people. They can be dry, manic, laid-back, iconic. Barcelona is what you might call a tonic. Always known as a vivid and creative city, Barcelona is taking the lead as an exemplary change agent on the European stage. Its DIY vigor and urgent form of citizen-level democracy are palpable, contagious, and best of all, effective.

This is a city that has been reinvented by activism. A formidable woman by the name of Ada Colau, herself a longtime front-line activist for housing rights, is now the mayor. As a woman, as an activist, as a mayor, she’s a good stand-in for the city itself and the radical positive changes it’s making.

But that’s not to say that Ada Colau is responsible for all the whirlwind political and civic change. Barcelona is not a city in reform from the top down; it’s a city in transformation from the bottom up, and up, and up. It’s taking on the challenges of economic and civic change from an inclusive and deliberate position, maturing its street-level praxis into a political force that won’t be contained by its own borders. It’s ready to share its hard-won knowledge and experience with others internationally....

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What Andrés Ruggeri describes for Argentina can be extended to most other recuperations around the globe:

One of the most interesting aspects of worker-recuperated companies is their relation with the communitarian, with the social, and that is what we are talking about when we say that none of the recuperations is recuperating itself alone. It is all about the movement, as there has been a lot of activism and militancy surrounding these recuperations. [There is] a much bigger movement with social links and social networks built around every recuperated company and around recuperated companies as such. [This movement] is very broad and very strong, it’s changing the very meaning of the companies. If the workers recuperate a company all alone, if they turn it into a cooperative and so on, no matter how radical the internal process is, if it is a company with only economic activities it would not have the transformative potential it has with the whole network surrounding the movement.

..from the above piece

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More than 300.000 users strong, Decide Madrid is consolidating itself as the hegemonic space for participation in the city. It activates a variety of processes, debates, proposals, and projects. Its free software means that any city can adapt Consul to its needs, without any substantial investment, and set up a platform. From Barcelona to A Coruña, from Rome to Paris and Buenos Aires, dozens of institutions around the world have replicated the initial Decide Madrid core, thus setting up what Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, calls a "liquid federation of cities". Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, ​​praising the cooperative network of participation cities says: "It is very interesting that in Barcelona we have been able to carry out our first experience of digital participation, Decidim Barcelona, ​​adapting Madrid’s base code. Once we have had a first proposal, we have shared it with many municipalities throughout Catalonia".

..more from above

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The emergence of citizen platforms

Since the financial crisis in 2007-8, citizen platforms have rapidly emerged across the globe. Their rise has been particularly strong in certain countries, such as Spain, where they now govern most major cities, as well as many towns and rural areas. These citizen groups are generally composed of independent candidates or of an alliance between independents and members of progressive political parties, with members frequently having roots in social movements. Ada Colau, for example, was at the forefront of the anti-eviction group, Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca), before becoming mayor of Barcelona.

Some citizen platforms are elected on a particular agenda, such as Barcelona en  Comú, who came to power in 2015 promising to defend citizen rights, rethink tourism in the city, fight corruption, and radically democratise local politics. Others have crowd-sourced their agenda or don’t have an agenda at all. Indy Monmouth in Wales, for example, ran for election with the promise that they would take their lead from the community once they were elected. This desire to transform politics and put power back into the hands of people is one of the primary aims of citizen platforms and the municipalist movement.

Radical democracy and the feminisation of politics

Municipalism is concerned as much with how outcomes are achieved as with the outcomes themselves. The need to radically democratise and feminise the political space was a persistent theme throughout the Fearless Cities conference.

Barcelona en Comú described how the democratisation and feminisation of politics is key to transformation, by bringing marginalised voices into the debate; reducing hierarchy; decentralising decision making; enabling dialogue, listening and collective intelligence; re-evaluating what we understand by the term experts and seeing everyone as experts in their own day-to-day life, their neighbourhoods and their communities; placing care, co-operation, relationship and people’s lived experience at the heart of politics; and facilitating co-responsibility for where we live, for the environment and for each other.

..my last quote from the above message of direction and hope

Local limitations and the rise of a global municipalist movement

The desire to access local government powers came, in part, from the limitations of protest and a wish to transform local institutions so that they could support social movements.

Along with the many success stories, councillors and mayors also spoke of the numerous challenges that they have faced on entering local government: age-old hierarchies, systems and traditions that are deeply embedded in their institutions; cuts to their budgets and resources; and the austerity, anti-immigration and other measures imposed from above.

Bit by bit, citizen platforms and progressive local politics are making headway, opening up spaces and redistributing power, but it’s often slower than originally hoped. Alongside citizen platforms, there is strong recognition of the fundamental role that social movements and non-state institutions have to play within the municipalist movement, in order to achieve the profound social and ecological change needed. These citizen platforms need strong movements on the ground that push for change from outside of the institution.

An important next step for this movement, and one of the main aims of the conference, is to form an international municipalist network. Putting technology at its service, the movement is spanning borders and becoming an interconnected web of place-based change that includes local government, social movements and non-state institutions.This comes from the recognition that we cannot work in isolation nor within the restrictions of national borders. Many of the most pressing challenges we face, such as climate change and the refugee crisis are global in nature and we need to work together to address them.

..here's a workshop in english, in audio or video. note the attendance of a vancouver city council member 

Policy roundtable 15: Mobility and pollution

This roundtable will present several ecofeminist mobility policies and discuss their role in combatting pollution while creating post-car cities.

Speakers
Janet Sanz, Fifth Deputy Mayor for Ecology, Urban Planning and Mobility, Barcelona
Olga Margalef, Plataform for Air Quality, Catalonia
Andrea Reimer, Councilor for Environmental Action, Vancouver City Council
Silvia Casorrán, Platform for the Promotion of Public Transport, Catalonia
Javier Miranda Baz, Ahora Madrid and M129, Madrid

..ken, your a person of few words in this thread. do you have more thoughts re the municipalist movements that you aren't expressing? i'd like to hear them if you have..even if they conflict with my position.  

Understand Faircoin, the real economy of common people

Faircoin, a cryptocurrency that does not depend on states or banks and grows the real economy of ordinary people.

At the end of April 2014, Enric Duran, co-creator of the concept of Cooperativa Integral and co-founder of the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, began to develop the idea that it would end up being Faircoop, a cooperative for everyone and around the world. After intense research in the world of cryptomonedes, Enric chose the Faircoin criptomoneda because of its characteristics and history, and anonymus he developed the project. Later revealed his identity and shared his plan with other Faircoin developers to cooperate together.

Between the months of May and July of 2014 a promotional group with people of different groups like P2P Foundation, the Darkwallet or the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, and several individualities from around the world was formed. In September 17, 2014, Faircoop saw the light. Since then, local nodes have been built around the world and developing a broad economic ecosystem. Faircoin was especially important in 2015 in the economic crisis in Greece.

How does a cryptocurrency work?

A cryptomoneda is a digital currency, based on a decentralized and crypto-encrypted p2p (peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer) network. Being decentralized, there is no central bank to issue money, so it is not subject to the control of banks, governments or large corporations. The value of cryptocurrencies, as with traditional currencies, depends on the trust people give it, that is, the flow of supply and demand, so that the more exchanges there are and more people participate, more value tea.

This exchange, unlike fixed money, is produced directly between producers and consumers, without going through intermediaries, if we add that the decisions and their use and value are taken from the coordination of the local assemblies, it causes us to have a currency that It increases the values of trust, reciprocity and links between physical and real networks....

 ..i see things a bit differently pondering. the struggles around the pipelines are both collaborative and community based. the leap's processes is community based. the indigenous movements are community based. the processes of transformation have already begun and will not go away once the pipeline issues are settled. qs is already a community based decision making structure. and it is only a matter of time before the free software developed in spain and used in other places in order to facilitate participatory decision making..will happen here. in canada.   

..more from the above piece.

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Elections and Democracy

Everywhere that electoral democracy has been practiced — from the US to Brazil, from ancient Athens to the medieval Italian city-states — the same basic problems continually reemerge.

The first is that the electoral process is inherently biased in favor of the rich — thereby undermining the cherished democratic ideal of political equality — because the precondition to winning an election is having the time and resources to communicate with the public and mobilize support, and that will always be done more effectively by those who have more money. This means that electoral democracy, regardless of campaign finance rules, will always be somewhat tilted towards the affluent.

The second problem is that the logic of competitive elections undermines the conditions for meaningful deliberation. Electoral competition creates strong incentives to score points, to speak in slogans and soundbites and dog whistles, to pander in order to build support for one’s own legislative agenda, and to actively stir up mistrust in one’s opponents through mudslinging and focussing on wedge issues. Electoral competition also undermines learning because politicians who have taken a confident stand on an issue for many years will find it embarrassing (as well as disloyal to their party and constituents) to change their minds. Yet those who cannot change their minds in the face of new evidence are precisely the people we do not want making important political decisions.

These two problems are not the result of bad luck or poor institutional design. They flow from the inherent logic of the electoral mechanism itself. In other words, the electoral system actually undermines two central democratic values: political equality and deliberation.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

I believe, as I suspect you do, that to get to anything resembling democracy, we have to abandon the representative part, and develop some sort of bottom up system of direct democracy. It would have to include the economic, as well as political realms, like for example anarcho-syndicalism. The encouraging thing with this approach is that capitalist domination can be gradually undermined by workers taking over their workplaces. As the British Labour Party manifesto has shown, it is possible for even the severely flawed electoral system to move things in the direction of more direct democracy by facilitating worker owned enterprises.

..exactly! building a new world inside the old is how i often describe it. 

 ..the labour manifesto is also about taking control at the local level which fits with the municipalist movements. what is exciting is not only have the tools been built to facilitate a participatory democracy but implementation has begun.

..here's an interesting take on economy.

link

Solidarity Economy as a Process

One of the great strengths and innovations of the solidarity economy movement is its ability to move beyond the factionalism that has so often weakened historical efforts to imagine and build other economies. Indeed, when faced with the question of economic alternatives, many activists have often been tempted to build or to seek a blueprint, a Big Plan, for how “the economy” should operate. While such “blueprints” for alternative economic structures can be very useful as tools for clarifying and motivating our work, they can be problematic as core social change strategies for at least two reasons. First, blueprints often miss the richness of what might emerge from a collective process of imagination and creation; no one person or group is capable of figuring out an economic structure for millions of others to live in. Second, they can lead to a very unfortunate choice of political paths: blueprint in hand, we either convince everyone that we’re right (unlikely) or take over the government and impose our plan on everyone (unethical). Either way, we’ve failed to build a substantially different kind of economy and society, and we’ve failed to live our values.

A solidarity economy approach takes a very different path. Beginning from a core belief that people are deeply creative and capable of developing their own solutions to economic problems, and that these solutions will look different in different places and contexts, a solidarity economy approach seeks to make existing and emerging alternatives visible and to link them in mutually-supportive ways. The core idea is simple: alternatives are everywhere and our task is to identify them and connect them in ways that build a coherent and powerful social movement for another economy. In this way, solidarity economy is not so much a model of economic organization as it is a process of economic organizing; it is not a vision, but an active process of collective visioning.

 ..here's an excerpt from a piece i recently posted in the venezuelan thread.

link:

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Chavez always said that the popular movement should not be an appendix of any institution or current, that we must be autonomous. I think it's necessary that popular organizations understand this now. We must have our own voice. Chavez always respected and encouraged our autonomy. The idea, of course, is not to be rebels without a cause. We are not anarchists. What we must do is be politically coherent and understand our role in history.

We have a legal structure that was fostered by Chavez and the people: the Laws of Popular Power. They establish a framework that is (to be somewhat redundant) popular and thus are an expression of grassroots democracy.

In the commune, the Citizens’ Assembly is the highest space for decision-making, the space where the whole community participates. Then comes the Communal Parliament, a body in which there is deliberation. The Communal Councils delegate their practical decision-making to the Communal Parliament. Again, these practical decisions follow the guidelines of the Citizens’ Assembly.

Some people understand democracy as the way to get access to positions of privilege. By contrast, our participative democracy is based on an assembly that saddles you with responsibilities, and if you do as collectively decided, then you have fulfilled your role as one part of the whole.

Our democracy is the democracy of the people, and that means that, when one is elected, one must separate oneself from any personal interests.

In a nutshell, in our commune the most important decisions are taken by the Citizens’ Assembly, whereas the Communal Parliament plans and executes. Operational decisions are taken at the level of the productive unit. In other words, we don’t call assemblies to solve operational problems. Then, of course, one must render accounts to the Assembly.

This is democracy as it plays out in El Maizal, with its particular mechanisms. But what I can say in general is that in the new democracy that is emerging, sectarian attitudes must disappear, personal power plays must be eliminated, and no one person can impose him or herself in the decision-making process.

The spirit of full participatory democracy lives in the commune.

How Jackson, Mississippi Is Making the Economy Work for the People

Jackson, Mississippi, will be “the most radical city on the planet," Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the city's mayor, pledged at the People's Summit in Chicago, where he spoke last July after his landslide election win.

The promise is grounded in a plan. Through participatory democracy and building counter-power, Jackson is organizing, and co-designing, an escape from capitalism and structural racism. The plan is comprehensive, and transforming the economy with cooperatives is one pillar.

“We want [cooperatives] to become the dominant feature of our local economy,” Kali Akuno told The Nation. “It’s really about a localization of the economy, about maximum control in the community’s hands. These are the things we can do that protect us from the ravages of global capitalism.”

Akuno and Mayor Lumumba are co-founders of Cooperation Jackson, which launched in May 2014. For the solidarity economy they seek to build, cooperatives serve as a cornerstone.

Jackson, and the state of Mississippi, need change. It remains the poorest part of the U.S., with a predominantly African-American population that first survived slavery, then apartheid Jim Crow laws. The structural racism continues today, as Akuno shorthands the region's problems as the three P's: Prisons, Poverty and Paternalistic white supremacy....

The ‘Preston Model’ and the modern politics of municipal socialism

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But difficulty need not be impossibility—as can be seen in the path taken by the flagship Labour council of Preston in Lancashire. In a few short years Preston has gone from being one of the most deprived parts of the country to a model of radical innovation in local government through its embrace of community wealth building as a modern reinvention of the longstanding political tradition of municipal socialism. Community wealth building is a local economic development strategy focused on building collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, and democratically controlled local economies. Instead of traditional economic development through public-private partnerships and private finance initiatives, which waste billions to subsidize the extraction of profits by footloose corporations with no loyalty to local communities, community wealth building supports democratic collective ownership of—and participation in—the economy through a range of institutional forms and initiatives. These include worker co-operatives, community land trusts, community development finance institutions, so-called ‘anchor’ procurement strategies, municipal and local public enterprise, participatory planning and budgeting, and—increasingly, it is to be hoped—public banking. Community wealth building is economic system change, but starting at the local level.

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Municipal socialism revisited

In the modern era of 24-7 news cycles and horserace political coverage, local politics rarely receives much attention. When local campaigns and politics are covered at all, it is usually because such elections are deemed to be a bellwether for the relative national political strength of the parties. This downgrading of local politics also extends to political analysts and activists, and often even to the political parties themselves, as can be seen in their reluctance to invest precious resources in local campaigns.

There are promising signs, however, that this is now beginning to change. With the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, municipal socialism has once again returned to the Labour Party’s agenda in a powerful way. “With amazing creativity in the toughest of times, we are seeing the first shoots of the renaissance of local government for the many, not the few—the rebirth of municipal socialism”, Corbyn proclaimed in February of this year.

[quote=Pondering]

Depending on the country I think it can be very successful but I think Canada is too comfortable for it to spread beyond a very small minority. 

..txs pondering

..there are places in canada where organizing can take place easier than other places. this is the way it is everywhere. here we can work with the leap and qs. both are predetermined to decision making from the bottom up. within the pipeline resistance as well.

Let's  take a small example. We have a housing co-op called Milton Park in Montreal. It's famous. Decades ago a developer wanted to tear down a large number of buildings to replace them with a shopping complex. Tenants fought back and managed to win the right to transform their buildings into co-ops. This was around 40 years ago if I recall correctly. Co-ops have spread a bit but Montreal is still covered in Condos many subsidized as "affordable housing". Imagine if co-op development was subsidized instead of "affordable"condos for sale. 

 In Montreal we have community gardens, meals on wheels, art- co-ops, all kinds of community run services for all kinds of people. That is great. I don't think government should be percieved  as an outside organization that does stuff to us. That is a gift to the right. 

..the idea is to bring these autonomous forces together as a way building a movement. so bringing together coops community gardens, the leap, environmentalists, independent socialists, ndp membership and qs membership..whatever and wherever it is applicable.

..these collaborations is how things came about in bacelona and madrid. a pipeline resistance group here in wpg is already based on such collaborations and struggle for community control. the time is ripe for for expansion.

In a democracy government is the organization through which citizens act collectively. Citizens need to understand the government works for them. They are our employees not our masters. 

..we don't live in a democracy which is why those organizing for direct participation is happening in the first place. the municipality though is the closest to democracy and within our reach.

..i came across this new site called "beautiful rising". i've just started exploring it but it is a toolbox. here is an excerpt from the first story.

Québec Student Strike

In a grassroots process, starting in 2010 and extending over a couple of years, Québec student unions, specifically the anarcho-syndicalist-inspired Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ), began publicly organizing toward an indefinite general strike to oppose rising tuition. In parallel, the ruling Liberal Party was pushing an unprecedented 80 percent tuition fee hike.The strike was rooted in a fundamental clash between two political visions: fully accessible post-secondary education squaring off against Québec’s political and corporate class applying an austerity-driven framework (see: THEORY: Neoliberalism).

In fall 2011, major protests began, with tens of thousands joining demonstrations against the proposed tuition hike and neoliberal policies more generally. Critically, these demonstrations were rooted in a process of direct democracy, as student general assemblies became the mobilization hubs of the strike.As momentum towards the strike grew, the governing Liberals arrogantly pushed ahead, refusing to open any real negotiations with students — a miscalculation that helped galvanize support for the student movement. As the 2012 winter semester began, one student general assembly after another voted to support a grève générale illimitée (an indefinite general strike).

On March 22, 2012, hundreds of thousands took the streets (see: TACTIC: Mass street action), marking the first of what would become monthly mass demonstrations backing the strike, all calling for the total abolition of post-secondary tuition.Strategically, ASSÉ moved to create an open, non-sectarian assembly process, gathering representatives from student unions across Québec, members of ASSÉ, and beyond. These gatherings, called CLASSÉ (Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante), would help chart the direction of the strike. CLASSÉ also included many members of the two more mainstream federations, the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) and Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), which were being pushed by their members to actively join the strike movement (see: METHODOLOGY: Spectrum of allies).

A key turning point in the strike was the imposition of Bill 78 by the governing Liberals in May, after months of student demonstrations. This “special law” drastically undermined the fundamental right to protest, declaring all future protests in Québec illegal unless pre-approved by police. Fortunately for the student movement, the special law backfired and actually worked to invigorate greater non-student participation in the strike (see: PRINCIPLE: If protest is made illegal, make daily life a protest), including growing nightly casseroles demonstrations where thousands of sympathizers took to the streets banging pots and pans (see: TACTIC: Noise-making protest [cacerolazo]).Direct action became a key tactic for sustaining political momentum around the strike. ASSÉ created a public online calendar for the strike that quickly filled with autonomous actions, including many demonstrations carried out by decentralized networks of student activists and community members (see: PRINCIPLE: We are all leaders)....

..another awesome autonomous project closer to home. shaped for and by the community to meet their needs. be sure to check out the video near the bottom for more info.

Nuxalk Nation Housing Program Breaks New Ground in Bella Coola

Nuxalk Nation is having a big impact on the landscape of Bella Coola and the lives of its members living there. The Nation has developed a groundbreaking housing program designed not only to build homes for its members, but to do so in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable way.

The homes are being built by apprentices from a Nuxalk-run carpentry program. The program connects Nuxalk students with skilled workers to construct buildings in their own community. Some of the projects created include a fisheries office, education building, chief’s building, and a new restaurant. The new longhouse designed restaurant was funded largely by Coast Funds and plans to open this Spring featuring a traditional First Nation inspired menu.

Nuxalk Nation is building four new sustainable homes for members of their community. Photo by Emilee Gilpin

Iceland's Slow-Burning Digital Democratic Revolution

For the last decade, Iceland has been a subject of democracy folklore. The country is often neglected due to its size and location, but when it receives attention it is almost mythologized. One reason for this is that the people there, from the bottom up, are innovating with digital democratic experiments. The folk are co-creating the law.

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The Punchline is Digital Democracy

In 2010, comedian Jón Gnarr ran as mayor of Reykjavík advocating for “honesty and integrity, empathy, non-violent communication and … fun. We were going to try to have fun doing it.”

He ran initially as a joke – the self-declared "anarcho-surrealist" candidate – but he encouraged citizens to participate through a website, Better Reykjavík. Launched just before the elections, the site enabled citizens to input and up-vote proposals and initiatives for the council.

To everyone's surprise, not least himself, Jón won. [Icelanders use first names]. By last year, using the online platform, 70,000 of 120,000 Reykjavíkians had interacted – proposing, supporting or collaborating on proposals. As a result, over 750 crowd-sourced proposals were implemented, ranging from converting an ex-power station to a youth centre to increasing cycle lanes and gender-neutral toilets.

Eight Years On

“[The platform] is still embraced by the council. The user interface has been overhauled so it looks more modern and is more usable than ever,” said Halldór Auðar Svansson, a Pirate Party councillor since 2014 who chairs the city's Committee on Administration and Democracy.

“Better Reykjavík has been floundering a bit, participation has dwindled and it hasn’t really been developed any further," he added. "[The online platform] My Neighbourhood, though, has been flourishing better and there have been some improvements in the processes.”

Whereas Better Reykjavík is about making proposals for the whole city, My Neighbourhood brings it down to an even more local level. Six percent of the city's budget is spent on crowd-sourced proposals – which today mean Reykjavík is reclaiming its principle street from cars and offering a new walkway to the beach.

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A Slow-Burning Revolution

Iceland's national political upheavals mimic its volcanoes. But things shift at bottom level, too. Compared to the days when Iceland nearly implemented a crowd-sourced Constitution, Halldór says there is less going on at the national level with digital democracy:

"But I do think that [the municipal democracy] has helped to keep the flame going. A few more municipalities have adopted the platform that Better Reykjavík runs for themselves, so more people think participatory tools are important... even standard practice at the local level," he said.

As an example, the Pirate Party went from outside rebels in 2013 to a firm place in Icelandic national politics, and are challenging now for a place in government. On the local level they now have two seats in Reykjavík and one in the town of Kópavogur.

"Our platform was very much based on transparency and eDemocracy although we did have some really fleshed out policy proposals, such as in welfare," Halldór added.