We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Mutu: rethinking our radical media

Click here to access article by "E & J" from Libcom (Britain). 

Although I am not an anarchist, who I think are too limited in their thinking, I am delighted by this post which reports on a rising network of grassroots independent media in France. The establishment of such networks is exactly what I think is vitally needed to counter the crushing oppression of ruling class corporate media. Media corporations serve only as propaganda and psychological warfare operations of the ruling capitalist class to create confusion and a false consciousness among ordinary people.
In May 2018, we attended a conference of the Mutu network in France, a network of local radical media websites which operate much like Indymedia did, but with a completely transparent editorial process.

We were blown away to discover how each of these sites, many we hadn’t even heard of, were acting as hubs for the various social movements taking place in cities and regions across France, focusing on local struggles and issues. With this focus, they became places where people went to find out about social conflicts when they broke out. But as we listened to descriptions of these sites connecting with groups of striking workers or occupying students, we also realised they function to draw together the various struggles within a given locality into a multi-faceted working-class movement.