The neighbors had broken into and occupied the bank building as I arrived in Parque Lezama. Middle aged and scruffy young activists carried out debris, scrubbed windows and floors and hung banners with the name of their assemblia popular and …
FE Author: David Solnit
May Day in San Francisco
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 353, Summer, 1999
“Alone we cannot change the terms of this rotten deal, but together anything is possible. Undo the leash of time and money. Take back your lives. We have the right, and we have the ability to make life worth living, …
Seattle
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 354, Spring, 2000
On November 30, 1999, a citizen uprising shut down the World Trade Organization and took over downtown Seattle, transforming it into a festival of resistance. Tens of thousands of people joined the nonviolent direct action blockade which encircled the WTO …
Anarchy in Chicago
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 348, Fall, 1996
As President Clinton delivered his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) talking about “a bridge to the 21st century,” a half a mile away Chicago police were raiding a building housing anarchists from the Active Resistance Counter-Convention …
25 Years of Giant Puppets, Mass Action & Public Spectacle
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 392, Fall/Winter 2014 - Art & Anarchy
“Puppet theater…[is] an anarchic art, subversive and untamable by nature, an art which is easier researched in police records than in theater chronicles.” –Peter Schuman, founder of Bread and Puppet, the great grandparents of political giant puppetry in North America
Reflections on Copenhagen and the Cycle of Movements
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 382, Spring, 2010
David Solnit is the co-author, with his sister Rebecca Solnit and Chris Dixon, of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press), the editor of Globalize Liberation; and the co-author, with Aimee Allison, of Army of …
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Tenth Anniversary of Bolivia’s Water War
by David Solnit
Fifth Estate # 383, Summer, 2010
In spring 2000, the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia rose up against the privatization of their water, forcing out the US based corporation, Bechtel, and Bolivia’s neo-liberal government to back down. The rebellion opened up new political space in Bolivia, catalyzing …