For humanity to have a future, we need to take power back from those who are destroying the possibility of one.

In a time of social and ecological crises, people everywhere are looking for solutions. States and capitalism, rather than providing them, only make matters worse. There’s a growing sense that we’ll have to fix this mess on our own. But how? Deciding for Ourselves, in the spirit of the Zapatistas, demonstrates that “the impossible is possible.” A better world through self-determination and self-governance is not only achievable. It is already happening in urban and rural communities around the world—from Mexico to Rojava, Denmark to Greece—as an implicit or explicit replacement for nations, police, and other forms of hierarchical social control. This anthology explores this “sense of freedom in the air,” as one piece puts it, by looking at contemporary examples of autonomous, directly democratic spaces and the real-world dilemmas they experience, all the while underscoring the egalitarian ways of life that are collectively generated in them.

Prologue: Cindy Milstein

Pan-Africanism, Social Ecology, and Intimate Direct Democracy: Modibo Kadalie in conversation with Andrew Zonneveld

A Horizontal City: Living Anarchism in Barcelona’s Peripheries: Stefano Portelli

Christiania: A Free City in the City of Copenhagen: Asbjørn Nielsen

Guarani-Kaiowá as Place-Name That Gives Voice to Solidarity: Cíntia Melo, with translation by Jose Renato

Politics and Care within the Quebec Student Strike:Rushia Mehreen and Pascale Brunet

 VioMe and Notara 26: Two Nodes in a Network of Greek Solidarity*: Niko Georgiades

The Bonfires of Autonomy in Cherán: Scott Campbell

“Only with You, This Broom Will Fly, ”Rojava, Magic, and Sweeping Away the State Inside of Us: Dilar Dirik

 “Freedom in the Air”: Quartier Libre des Lentillères: Tasha and Escabeche

 Waking to Revolution: Cindy Milstein