Over the past decade, millions of people have come together during powerful and dramatic social movement moments, in the occupations in Zuccotti Park, Gezi Park, Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square and thousands of other plazas around the world. Rather than appealing for concessions from those in power, participants in these movements rejected the “leaders” who have brought on a continuous stream of economic crisis, poverty, war, and racial violence to instead imagine — and try to create — a radical democracy where everyone is able to directly participate in creating our collective future.
This experimentation with direct democracy is not new in social movement organizing. For generations, powerful and dynamic social movement organizations have adopted directly democratic and horizontal models of organizing. Religious anti-war organizers, key organizations in the Black freedom struggle, the student movement of the 1960’s, the anti-nuclear movement and the global justice movement all employed models of horizontal consensus decision making[1] that were remarkably consistent with the methods of direct democracy that have appeared in the occupations of the past decade.
Direct democracy and horizontal organizing were not just common characteristics of each of these mobilizations and movements; they were vital conditions that facilitated solidarity among participants…
