[Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting
progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in
power. ]
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LESSONS FROM BARCELONA’S 8-YEAR EXPERIMENT IN RADICAL GOVERNANCE  
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Mark Engler and Paul Engler
May 9, 2023
Waging Nonviolence
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_ Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting
progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in
power. _

Ada Colau, Barcelona's first female mayor, and members of Barcelona
en Camú, elected to govern Barcelona in May 2015. ,

 

“They want us isolated, but they will find us in common.”

In May 2015, this slogan was the rallying cry of a Spanish movement
that startled its country’s political establishment by propelling
into power Ada Colau, Barcelona’s first female mayor. Colau took
office alongside a winning slate of city councilors who had joined
together in a new formation called Barcelona en Comú, Catalan for
“Barcelona in Common.” Their victory reflected a decision by
activists to move from occupying the town squares to taking over city
halls, and it would have profound consequences for the future of one
of Europe’s most prominent metropolitan areas.

Eight years later, Ada Colau and the Comuns, as they are referred to
locally, face a different political situation. They are no longer
insurgent outsiders launching an improbable challenge to the
region’s traditional parties. Rather, they are leaders who have
spent eight years in office, amassing a record of accomplishment but
also encountering the challenges of governance. Now, they are fighting
for a third term — attempting not only to convince voters that their
mission of creating a “fearless city” should continue, but also to
cobble together alliances with other parties that will allow them to
stay in command of Barcelona’s historic City Hall.

After two terms, the radical experiment in Barcelona has found limits
to the project of bringing social movement energy into the corridors
of institutional power. And yet, it remains an intriguing model of
electoral strategy.

So what can we learn from the successes and shortcomings of Barcelona
en Comú so far? And can the Comuns take their process of democratic
revolt further?

WINNING BACK THE CITY

Barcelona en Comú came out
[[link removed]] of
a moment of intensive social movement activity that fomented after the
global financial crisis of 2008. In the spring of 2011, more than six
million
[[link removed]] Spaniards poured
into public spaces
[[link removed]] across
some 60 towns and cities, joining protests that included a May 15
mobilization in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square. The
demonstration turned into
[[link removed]] a
28-day occupation and gave name to the “M15” movement. Its
participants, known as the Indignados, or “the outraged
[[link removed]!],” railed against
unemployment, austerity and rampant corruption in government,
rejecting the country’s elite with the call of “no nos
representan,” or “they don’t represent us.” Along with the
“movement of the squares” in Greece, the mobilization shook Europe
and helped to inspire Occupy Wall Street later that year.

Subsequently, activists in Barcelona and other Spanish cities decided
to channel some of the spirit of the protests into efforts to take
over the institutions of local government. “We took the social
networks, we took the streets and we took the squares,” leaders of
Barcelona en Comú would later write
[[link removed]].
“However, we found that change was being blocked from above by the
institutions. So… we decided to win back the city.”

The Comuns drew not only from the ethos of M15, but also from
Barcelona’s vibrant network of neighborhood movements
[[link removed]].
Ada Colau, for one, rose to prominence as spokesperson of the Platform
for People Affected by Mortgages, or PAH, a dynamic anti-eviction
group. The PAH formed
[[link removed]] support
groups for people in debt, used nonviolent direct action to stop
residents from being removed from their homes, led delegations to
pressure banks to accept new agreements with mortgage holders, and
worked to transform the country’s housing laws. Shortly after Colau
was photographed being dragged away by riot police during one
particularly visible 2013 protest against a bank that refused to
negotiate with an evicted family, one local newspaper poll showed
[[link removed]] a
90 percent approval rating for the organization.

Instead of forming a traditional political organization, Colau and
other organizers envisioned Barcelona en Comú as a new structure that
would be open, transparent and participatory. They sought to create a
“confluence” that would bring a new social base into politics and
invite in members who were not previously represented. Calling their
new organization a “platform” rather than a “party,” Barcelona
en Comú did include
[[link removed]] the
participation of five existing political parties (Procés Constituent,
ICV-EUiA, Podemos, Equo, and the newly formed Guanyem). But they did
not divide up the spoils between them, as would be typical in most
European-style coalition politics. Rather, the Comuns required these
pre-existing groups to join in a wider collective process and to build
a shared identity around a common agenda for transforming the city.

Barcelona en Comú crafted
[[link removed]] its
electoral program through proposals gleaned from open meetings in
public spaces across the city and ideas from civic organizations. This
was followed by a process of popular debate and collective refinement
that played out over many months. “It is essential to start like
this,” the Comuns argued, “proving that there are other ways of
doing politics — listening, participating, collaborating — from
the very beginning.” The result was an agenda committing newly
elected leaders to a program for change that combined
neighborhood-level demands with a set of broader mandates. Priorities
ranged from combating corruption, guaranteeing social rights and
creating housing security, to subsidizing transportation and energy
costs for those in need. The Comuns vowed to bring an explicitly
feminist lens to city politics, as well as to reign in the runaway
expansion of the tourism industry.

At a time when large numbers of residents were disgusted with “la
casta,” the country’s entrenched class of political and economic
elites, the populist appeal to voters worked. Barcelona en Comú was
able to secure a plurality of seats on the city council in 2015, and
Colau subsequently managed to gain a second term as mayor after
elections in 2019.

Once in government, the Comuns were able to use municipal institutions
to work towards their vision. But they have also seen their
aspirations frequently run up against a variety of unpleasant
realities. They have had to maneuver within a slow-moving political
process while facing the challenges of constant opposition from
political foes, demonization by the mainstream media and lawsuits with
deep-pocketed corporate backers. In other words, Occupied City Hall
proved to be a battleground of its own.

EIGHT YEARS MATTER

Today, the completion of two terms in office invites reflection on
what insights can be drawn from the experience of the Comuns. A first
notable lesson is straightforward: eight years matter.

Barcelona en Comú can point to many examples of how it has made a
significant positive impact over the course of two terms in office. As
only a partial list: Ada Colau’s government increased overall social
spending by 50 percent, including a significant expansion of mental
health services and programs for the homeless. It quadrupled the
budget for social housing and built 2,100 new housing units. It
recovered 150 million euros from big companies by cracking down on tax
fraud. Among other initiatives designed to control the tourism
industry, the administration stood up to intensive lobbying from
business and real estate interests by maintaining a years-long
moratorium on new hotel construction and imposing regulations on
platforms such as Airbnb. They closed upwards of 7,500 illegal tourist
flats and, by some estimates, prevented the creation of tens of
thousands more.

As scholars Erik Forman
[[link removed]], Elia Gran
[[link removed]] and Sixtine van
Outryve
[[link removed]] reported
in _Dissent_ in 2020, “They set up a sustainable public energy
company, a publicly owned dental clinic that offers affordable rates
and the city’s first municipal LGBTQ center. The city created coop
businesses for migrants and refugees and is attempting to use city
procurement to source from cooperatives. More recently, they enacted a
measure requiring that 30 percent of new buildings be used for
affordable housing and created an anti-eviction unit.” Colau’s
administration also declared Barcelona a “city of refuge,”
expanding municipal services to refugees, asserting a local role in
asylum policy and fostering a network of European cities that are
welcoming of migrants — a set of actions that clashed with national
policies set in Madrid.

Finally, Barcelona has been a leader
[[link removed]] in
pushing cities toward greater sustainability. The city declared a
climate emergency in 2020 and committed
[[link removed]] some
$600 million towards slashing carbon emissions. Barcelona’s
103-point climate plan includes the dramatic bolstering of bike lanes,
restrictions on polluting vehicles, expanding urban gardens,
installation of public solar panels and incorporating sustainability
standards into public contracts.

The mayor has been willing to polarize the public around the drive to
push cars out of the city. The city’s flagship “Superblock”
program aims, in Colau’s words, “to recover one million square
meters of public space for popular use” by merging multiple city
blocks into pedestrian havens. Environmental writer David Roberts
has characterized
[[link removed]] it
as a plan for green urban design “bigger and more ambitious … than
anything being discussed in America.” The Superblocks, he wrote,
constitute “a vision for a different way of living in the 21st
century, one that steps back from many of the mistakes of the
auto-besotted 20th century, refocusing on health and community.”

Strangely, despite all of these accomplishments, the Comuns have found
themselves more isolated than when they started.

One thing that was exciting about Barcelona en Comú’s dramatic
appearance in 2015 is that the group did not emerge alone. Rather, it
self-consciously situated itself as part of something larger.
Domestically, Barcelona was only one of many leftist drives to capture
city government in Spain. A variety of like-minded “municipalist”
platforms won office in cities across the country, including A
Coruña, Cadíz, Valencia, Zaragoza, and — most prominently —
Madrid. Internationally, the Comuns launched a network called
“Fearless Cities” to connect with progressive governments in
cities from Rosario, Argentina to Bologna, Italy, as well as upstart
coalitions still vying for power.

“From the very beginning, those of us who participated in Barcelona
en Comú were sure that the democratic rebellion in Barcelona
wouldn’t be just a local phenomenon,” the platform’s
leaders wrote
[[link removed]].
“We want Barcelona to be the trigger for a citizen revolution in
Catalonia, Spain, Southern Europe and beyond.”

However, in elections in 2019, the wave that gave rise to municipalist
hopes across Spain abruptly crashed ashore. In many Spanish cities,
progressives were ousted by more conservative opponents; in other
cases, activist “confluences” fractured
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were replaced by more traditional party politicking. “The right won
in Madrid,” explained David Cid, a member of the Catalonian
parliament who has been part of the Comuns. Since then, “they have
been undoing all the work” of the left, he said. “To really
consolidate your model of the city, you can’t change things in four
years. You can change a city in eight or 12 years.”

Holding an initial plurality of only 11 of 41 seats on the city
council, Barcelona en Comú always relied on the support of other
parties to move its initiatives forward. As the establishment media
launched relentless attacks on Colau and her colleagues, business
interests deployed legal challenges to many progressive measures —
blocking, in one instance, efforts to “re-municipalize”
Barcelona’s privatized water supplier. The platform’s councilors
quickly felt the limits of their power. “Just trying to implement
your manifesto when you need the vote of opposition parties to do it
means that, inevitably, you’re not going to be able to do everything
you wanted to do,” said Kate Shea Baird, who served on the Executive
Committee of Barcelona en Comú, in a 2018 interview
[[link removed]] in
the_ Ecologist_.

“You get into City Hall, even a relatively powerful City Hall like
Barcelona, and you realize that not all of the power is there,” she
continued. “Airbnb has a lot of power. The Catalan government has a
lot of power. The Spanish government has a lot of power. The media has
a lot of power. Winning the election is the first step to getting
anything done.”

Echoing this sentiment, Álvaro Porro, an activist who has become the
city’s Commissioner for Social Economy, Local Development and Food
Policy, quipped: “We’re the most ambitious government in the
history of Barcelona, with the least power in the history of
Barcelona.”

During Colau’s first term, the issue of Catalan nationalism exploded
into headlines, with large-scale protests for independence meeting
staunch repression from the national government. In response, the
mayor tried to walk a fine line, supporting the rights of
demonstrators but opposing separatist demands — a position that
invited criticism from all sides.

In the 2019 elections, Barcelona en Comú, vying for another term in
power, came in second place and lost one of its council seats. Colau
was able to retain control of City Hall only by securing the backing
of the centrist Socialist party as well as that of more conservative
councilors who wanted to block pro-independence forces. Reliance on
such dealmaking limited the ability of the Comuns to maneuver
aggressively, and it also dampened the enthusiasm of its base.
Combined with the COVID pandemic, these developments served to slow
progress during Colau’s second term.

In advance of the upcoming elections in late May, other parties are
actively calculating the leverage they might enjoy by shifting to
other alliances. Given these circumstances, whether the Comuns can
turn eight years of change into 12 remains to be seen.

CHANGING THE CULTURE OF INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS IS HARD

A second important lesson learned after two terms in office is that,
while controlling the levers of city power can allow for real gains,
changing the culture of institutional politics is another challenge
entirely.

From its inception, Barcelona en Comú sought to approach the
electoral realm differently than traditional parties. “A citizen
platform doesn’t just aim to change local policies,” its
leaders wrote
[[link removed]].
“It also aims to change the rules of the game and create new ways of
doing politics.” This ambition created excitement, but it also
generated high expectations and opened space for disillusionment with
changes that felt less than revolutionary.

As one means of setting itself apart, Barcelona en Comú sought to
avoid creating cults of personality around celebrity politicians,
favoring instead a social movement model of leaderful participation.
However, Ada Colau’s charisma and public appeal have loomed large.
This could be seen in the process that brought the Comuns together. In
terms of its structure, the platform wanted
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reach beyond established political cadres and avoid becoming “a
coalition or an alphabet soup of party acronyms.” For the
traditional left parties that signed on, agreeing to join such a
structure was a sacrifice. After all, their top representatives were
not guaranteed priority spots on a “list” of candidates and their
political priorities would be subject to review by assemblies of
activists.

Yet the reason the small parties in Barcelona were more willing to
merge individual identities into a common project than in, say,
Madrid, was due to the obvious benefit of being associated with Colau.
“Without Ada Colau, who is a completely amazing politician, this
process would not be so successful,” argued Mauro Castro, a
political scientist who has a background working in Barcelona’s
autonomous social movements and is a member of La Hidra Cooperative, a
think tank and public education initiative. “To be honest, she’s
just a machine. She’s very good at keeping everybody aligned.”

Another way in which Barcelona en Comú attempted to distinguish its
candidates from mainstream politicians was by having them sign on to a
strict code of ethics. This was designed to curtail the privileges
associated with professional politicians and lessen the distance
between the city’s political leaders and ordinary residents.
Borrowing a slogan from the Mexican Zapatistas, the Comuns dubbed
their approach “Governing by Obeying.” The code involved limiting
elected officials to two consecutive terms in office, doing away with
perks such as official cars and paid expenses, and consenting to high
standards of transparency. Moreover, Barcelona en Comú’s councilors
— up to and including Colau — agreed to voluntarily cap their
income at three times the minimum wage, initially 2,200 euros (or
around $2,500) per month. They have donated the remainder of their
official salaries to social movement groups.

Although some other left parties in Spain such as Podemos also follow
a similar protocol, it goes without saying that such a practice
appears quite extraordinary by U.S. political standards — at least
for politicians who are not independently wealthy and actually rely on
their government paychecks to live. It also marked a sharp break from
precedent in Barcelona: the _Guardian _reported
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2016 that while Colau’s effective take-home pay came to well under
30,000 euros during her first year in office, her predecessor Xavier
Trias had regularly pocketed
[[link removed]] 140,000
euros annually in salary and expenses.

The code of ethics has made a lasting impact on the city’s political
culture, and it reflects a moment when public outrage at political
corruption ran high. Over time, however, the Comuns have moved to
relax some standards — particularly their commitment to strict term
limits. In 2022, Barcelona en Comú members voted to approve
[[link removed]] Ada
Colau and other senior councilors running once again for reelection.

Another example of how established norms have proven difficult to
shake relates to what Colau and other Spanish leftists have called the
“feminization of politics.” Central in the formation of Barcelona
en Comú was the idea of bringing an overtly feminist perspective to
organizing and governance. For Colau, such politics includes
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culture of listening and empathy, calling on politicians to “lower
the levels of testosterone” in their combative posturing,
recognizing the importance of care work, setting up structures that
allow for a balance between the personal and the professional. It also
means validating the idea that, in the mayor’s words
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“politics done collectively are better than those done
individualistically.”

This perspective translated into policy. By 2021, the City Council’s
website could cite
[[link removed]] efforts
to “incorporate the gender perspective in every area of politics and
society so as to combat the more structural aspects of gender
inequality and sexism and overcome the situations of discrimination
that still persist in a patriarchal society such as ours.” Among
other measures, Colau’s government created
[[link removed]] the
Councilor’s Office for Feminism and LGBTI Affairs, created
[[link removed]] the
municipal child care program Concilia to support work-life
balance, halted
[[link removed]] fines
on sex workers, launched the “Anti-Sexist Barcelona” program to
combat sexual violence, incorporated gender-based criteria into city
planning and design, and established
[[link removed]] Barcelona
Activa, an employment program for women.

Yet even supporters feel that change has been limited when it comes to
effecting how politics plays out. Gala Pin, an activist who served as
a city councilor and deputy mayor with the Comuns from 2015 to 2019,
states that, in terms of municipal policy, the focus on feminism has
made a big difference. “But feminism in politics,” she said,” if
we talk about being able to reconcile private life with being in
institutional politics, or how decisions are made, I don’t think
there is a big difference now, to be honest. I think the dynamic of
the institutions has won the battle in some sense.”

Ada Colau described the tension in a 2016 documentary
[[link removed]]: “I can’t be
the Ada I used to be,” she said. “When I was at the PAH it was
easier to show the political power that comes from admitting weakness,
contradiction, doubt … Initially I honestly thought this could be
carried over into politics and that it was necessary … But that
doesn’t work in politics because your own people want you to always
be there, to be strong, to lead and to not have any doubts.”

Such experiences reflect a broader difficulty. In Mauro Castro’s
view, the Comuns have had to accommodate themselves to functioning
within the constraints of mainstream institutions. “They’re doing
the best public policy that they can, definitely,” he said. “I
would not imagine any better place in the world in terms of doing
public policy. But public policies are not changing the way you
govern.” Once activists accept the realpolitik of working within the
institutions, Castro contends, they are put in a defensive posture
that involves highlighting bureaucratic achievements, cautioning about
the limits of the possible, and backing away from the more radically
participatory visions that animated their initial campaign.

Having spent a term as a deputy mayor, Gala Pin retains faith in the
project, but also expresses some reservations: “Over time you
internalize the dynamics of political institutions,” she said of her
experience. “You change them a little bit, but they change you much
more.”

YOU STILL NEED MOVEMENTS ON THE OUTSIDE

A third lesson is that movements and parties play different roles —
and perhaps can never be fully reconciled. Barcelona en Comú has
consistently emphasized the importance of citizens taking ownership
over politics beyond periodically casting votes at the polls. “For
us, ‘winning back the city’ is about much more than winning the
local elections,” the Comuns’ leaders wrote
[[link removed]] in
their guide to building a municipalist campaign. “It means putting a
new, transparent and participatory model of local government, which is
under citizen control, into practice … Our strategy has been to
start from below, from what we know best: our streets, our
neighborhoods.”

Barcelona en Comú has operationalized its vision internally by
developing its political positions in frequent consultation with a
multi-tiered network of neighborhood assemblies and working groups.
Externally, they have implemented mechanisms for the public at large
to take part in city policymaking. Perhaps most notable is the online
Decidim platform, through which more than 100,000 registered users
have voted
[[link removed]] on
citizen-generated proposals for neighborhood improvements and engaged
in participatory budgeting processes that, in 2022, distributed some
30 million euros in resources.

However, the Comuns’ marquee public participation measure — which
aimed to allow issues that garnered signatures from just 15,000 voters
to go to citywide referendum — faced stiff opposition and was
ultimately ruled invalid by the courts. Internally, recruitment of
activists slowed after the 2015 elections, as the platform turned to
focus on the challenges of running city offices. As two leaders from
the group’s executive committee would later write, “The upshot was
that it was quite difficult to join Barcelona en Comú as a new member
between 2015 and 2018.” Pandemic fatigue later contributed to
further demobilization, they added.

Early on, some observers of the political process in Spain had hopes
that Podemos at the national level and the municipalist platforms in
the cities could become hybrid “movement parties.” These
organizations, in the words
[[link removed]] of
sociologist Cristina Flesher Fominaya, would “maintain links to, and
characteristics of, participatory social movements while at the same
time trying to win state power through elections.” Yet it seems
clear that Barcelona en Comú is not a substitute for social movements
operating on the outside of mainstream institutions.

“I think it is important to say that we didn’t want
to _represent_ the social movements,” notes Gala Pin. Although the
Comuns formed as a result of the resolve of many individuals who had
been politicized through movement activism to collectively intervene
in electoral politics, there was never a formal decision by grassroots
groups themselves to endorse the platform. “We said, ‘We come from
the movements, but they have to stay independent,’” remarked Pin.

Several aspects of the experience of Barcelona en Comú have
highlighted how movements and government operate according
to different logics
[[link removed]].
Outside critics charge that, despite the Comuns’ efforts to engage
their base, it is extremely difficult to avoid a situation in which
governance becomes the domain of specialized administrators. “It has
become professionalized,” Castro said of Barcelona en Comú’s time
in City Hall. “It has become something very influenced by the
machine.” When social movements raise criticisms, he said, city
officials will consistently respond by saying, “Yeah, you know,
things are too complicated.”

Moreover, movement participants complain that their groups lost
capacity when a large number of organizers were absorbed into roles in
the city bureaucracy. As a consequence, there was less active
mobilization pushing for the new insiders to pursue their most
ambitious goals.

At its best, an inside-outside strategy
[[link removed]] is
able to acknowledge these tensions while also seeing how groups
pursuing different approaches can relate to one another as part of a
common ecology of change. As Kate Shea Baird has written
[[link removed]] of
the muncipalist project, “transformative politics … must also
involve building an ecosystem of social movements, economic
initiatives and community institutions that can support these
candidates’ agendas from outside City Hall, and hold them to account
when necessary.”

During the first year in office, Colau’s own organizational home,
the PAH, criticized her over lack of progress in stopping evictions.
As scholars Sebastiaan Faber and Bécquer Seguín reported
[[link removed]],
the mayor responded with a Facebook post
[[link removed]] in
which she stated, “I’d do the same thing in your position.”
Colau further explained: “I’ve said it many times and I repeat it
again now more forcefully and with more conviction than ever: without
an organized and demanding citizenry, not only would there not be real
change, there would also not be a democracy worthy of its name.”

Mauro Castro emphasizes other conflicts between outside activists and
their contacts in city government. “For example, we are now
struggling for a new housing law,” he explained. “And only at the
last moment do [the Comuns] say, ‘Go to the streets, protest so we
can push more within this coalition government.’” By that time,
activists felt disaffected by the process and resented being called in
just as reinforcements. “So the movements are like, ‘Fuck
you,’” he said.

Castro acknowledges, however, that relationships between inside and
outside activists have allowed for valuable informal exchanges of
information. Elena Tarifa, a journalist who serves on the
international committee of the Comuns, wrote
[[link removed]] in 2021 that the fact that “many of
Barcelona en Comú’s activists come from neighborhood associations
and diverse social movements” helps to “keep the channels of
communication open.”

Embed from Getty Images [[link removed]]

Taxi drivers block the Gran Via in Barcelona on July 28, 2018

Although there have been instances of tension, there have also been
times when inside action and social movement protest have combined
effectively. In 2018, the city advanced efforts to regulate rideshare
services such as Uber — which Colau would later denounce
[[link removed]] as
“speculative pirates.” When initial regulations were blocked by
Catalonia’s High Court of Justice, taxi drivers blocked major roads
for days in a strike that quickly spread to other cities. City
officials stood with
[[link removed]] the
strikers, and Colau helped to pressure the national government in
Madrid to reach a settlement favorable to the drivers.

In the end, the push for change from within the government and without
requires maintaining a tricky balance — which most politicians
scarcely acknowledge at all. Despite having criticisms of the
platform, Castro believes that, for social movements, the Comuns
losing to more traditional parties would be a blow. “It’s good to
have Barcelona en Comú. We need to create more Barcelonas en
Comú.” He reflects that after others take over, whenever that may
be, “We will realize what it means to lose them.”

Voters will decide if Colau and her colleagues will be able to extend
their unusual exercise in governance into a third term following
elections later this month. Regardless, the Comuns will leave lasting
changes. Before the platform changed the political debate, Gala Pin
argued, “no one was talking about massive tourism and the
consequences for the city. Maybe some radical social movements were,
but the government did not listen to us.” Now it does, she says —
and she has seen similar progress on climate change, feminism, LGBTQ
recognition and other issues. When it came to housing, Pin said,
“city council was always saying ‘we don’t have the power to deal
with housing issues.’ Now every party is saying that they want to
build up more public housing and that Colau is not doing enough.”
Creating those shifts, she contends, is a type of power.

Whatever challenges the experiment in occupying Barcelona’s halls of
governance has involved, it has produced profound lessons for those
who traveled from movements to institutions to try to make such shifts
— and therefore it will remain fruitful ground for study for others
looking to transform their own cities. As Álvaro Porro said,
“There’s a lot of practical knowledge embodied in this experience,
coming from mistakes and from successes, which I really feel we need
to share.”

_Research assistance provided by Sophia Zaia and Sean Welch._

_Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board
member at Dissent, and co-author of "This Is An Uprising: How
Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century" (Nation Books).
He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com
[[link removed]]._

_Paul Engler is the director of the Center for the Working Poor in Los
Angeles, and a co-founder of the Momentum Training
[[link removed]], and co-author, with Mark Engler,
of "This Is An Uprising [[link removed]]."_

 

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