Minneapolis Municipalist Research Group

Editors Note: The Llano Del Rio Collective has been working symmetrically with artist Sam Gould (while producing our Rebel City L.A. Project) regarding his activities addressing the theorization of, and agitation for, people oriented approaches to urban politics. Along with Macalester College professor John Kim, Gould is organizing a symposium in March of 2018 called “What Can A City Be? A Municipalist Gathering“. We asked Kim and Gould to share with Llano Del Rio the scope of there activities.
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Since the 2016 presidential elections, the Twin Cities based City as Commons, or Municipalist Research Group, has been meeting to discuss, learn and find out more about municipalism. The group, open to everyone, has been developing collaborations among Twin Cities-based academics, activists, and artists interested in urban governance and social reproduction and putting them in conversation with colleagues across North America, Europe, and South America who are studying, and/or experimenting with, municipalist forms of governance.

Since we started meeting, we’ve hosted a wide range of meetings. Some of these have included: a conversation with Alan W. Moore and Fernando Canteli De Castro to update us on municipalist activities internationally; reading group meetings of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Assembly; discussions and critique of a draft version of a USA statement of municipalist principles, entitled “Municipalism: Winning Back the USA Street by Street”; and more.

We are now preparing for What Can a City Be? A Municipalist Gathering (March 22-23 2018), two days of talks, panel discussions and workshops by local artists, academics, activists, and thinkers, along with three international and rural activists and scholars whose work has explored municipalist movements and bottom-up organizing.

To find out more about our activities, visit Beyond Repair.