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Analysis: Participation

Community Media: The Thriving Voice of the Venezuelan People

By Liz Migliorelli and Caitlin McNulty , Jul 31st 2009

In Venezuela today a grass-roots movement of community and alternative media is challenging the domination of private commercial media. Part of this transformation is the understanding of freedom of speech as a positive and basic right.

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Street Art in Revolutionary Venezuela

By Dale Graden - NACLA, Jul 30th 2009

Street art plays an increasingly vital role in revolutionary Venezuela: It is a mode of political expression, a form of popular education, and helps build a collective historical memory. Few places show this more brilliantly than the walls of 23 de Enero with its combative spirit inscribed on almost every corner.

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Common Ground: Learning from Latin American Social Movements

By Ben Dangl - Znet, Jul 26th 2009

As the global economic crisis expands, a rapidly increasing number of people are seeking ways to combat unemployment, marginalization, corruption, repression and other problems. Such challenges have faced millions of Latin Americans for decades, and as a result, many successful grassroots solutions to economic crisis have been developed by people in communities across the continent. In this essay, I propose that strategies from Latin American social movements can be applied elsewhere in the world to build better societies.

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Popular power in Latin America -- Inventing in order to not make errors

By Marta Harnecker, Jul 12th 2009

The closing lecture given at the XVI Gallega Week of Philosophy, Pontevedra, April 17, 2009. Harnecker examines a new situation faced by the Latin American left, where the emergence of left governments has come out of a crisis in the legitimacy of neoliberalism. She examines the role of social movements, the military, these new governments in the new situation and also looks at Venezuela and socialism of the 21st century.

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Venezuela: A “Critical Evaluation” of the Bolivarian Process II

By Marta Harnecker , Jun 25th 2009

This is another one of the presentations broadcast on the state-owned television channel VTV. It was part of a forum "Intellectuals, Democracy & Socialism" organized by the Centro Internacional Miranda over June 2-3, which has sparked a debate about the role of criticism within the Bolivarian process.

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Grassroots Lessons From Latin America

By Michael Fox - Toward Freedom, Jun 18th 2009

In an interview journalist and filmmaker Michael Fox talks about what lessons US activists might consider from social movements throughout Latin America, and the challenges of applying Latin American activist strategies in the US under an Obama administration.

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Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television

By Lainie Cassel - UpsideDownWorld.org, Jun 15th 2009

In Venezuela they are a key force in the country's ongoing media-war. Armed with video cameras, they are a team of some 380 young people working for Caracas television station, Avila TV.

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A New Model With Rough Edges: Venezuela’s Community Councils

By Steve Ellner - NACLA, Jun 11th 2009

For the Chavistas, the “revolutionary process” consists of people gaining control of their lives in the areas where they live, more so than in the workplace. This emphasis is reflected in the the fact that the community councils have received far more attention and resources than the worker-management schemes ever did.

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US Policy and Democracy in Latin America: The Latinobarómetro Poll

By Kevin Young - ZNet, Jun 3rd 2009

Does the US government really craft its policy toward specific regimes based on those regimes' respect for democracy? The general trend is one of US support for the more undemocratic regimes in the region, and US antagonism of varying sorts and degrees toward the more democratic ones.

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Venezuela: ‘When the working class roars, capitalists tremble’

By Federico Fuentes - Green Left Weekly, Jun 1st 2009

Addressing the 400-strong May 21 workshop with workers from the industrial heartland of Guayana, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez noted with satisfaction the outcomes of discussions: “I can see, sense and feel the roar of the working class.”

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Battling Murder in Venezuela's Participatory Republic

By George Gabriel - OpenDemocracy.net, May 31st 2009

If participatory democracy is to offer an alternative it must rise to the direst of challenges. In Venezuela, where the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution explicitly aims to create a "democratic, participatory and self-reliant" society, yet over 100,000 people were killed in a decade, this challenge is insecurity.

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Chavez Calls on Workers to Push for Workplace Democracy in Venezuela

By Hermann Albrecht - In Defence of Marxism, May 29th 2009

President Chavez recently announced a series of new nationalisations, but he also stressed the need for workers' control, planning and socialism. What now needs to be done is to act on these words and the only force that can do that is the working class.

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Observations on a Venezuelan Workplace Struggle

By Paul Lafrack - Solidarity, May 29th 2009

Serving lunch at the comedor.
The perception of “here the people lead” is what’s crucial. With Mayela’s firing, that was initially taken away, but then reasserted. It's the mere fact that people expect to be in control that makes a real difference.

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The Development of Venezuela's Popular Economy, Pt. 2

By Jan Ullrich – Venezuelanalysis.com, May 27th 2009

In 2007, ten organized communities in different Venezuelan states put into practice the idea of local solidarity-based interchange networks, called trueques (barter rings). Almost 2,000 people have joined these networks in order to establish a new communal relationship between production and consumption.

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The Development of Venezuela's Popular Economy, Pt. 1

By Jan Ullrich – Venezuelanalysis.com, May 21st 2009

Certainly, the Chavez government has broken with the neoliberal agenda of the preceding decades. But has it developed instead a shift toward a participatory and democratic economy as the core of 21st Century Socialism?

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