What does it look like to build powerful place-based movements capable of transforming society? How do we weave together grassroots institutions into a holistic force that can both challenge and transcend oppressive systems?
In our last session of the year, we’re wrapping up the 2025 Municipalism Learning Series with a special conversation led by organizers and educators who have first-hand experience with transformative movements around the world, from Brazil to Rojava to Jackson, Mississippi.
While these movements differ widely in their context, scope, and tactics, they all share a general strategic framework of “dual power” — the revolutionary concept of “building a new society within the shell of the old.” Join us for an evening of learning, as we draw both lessons and inspiration from these examples.
Speakers:
- Kali Akuno (Cooperation Jackson)
- Rebecca Tarlau (Stanford University)
- Arthur Pye (Emergency Committee for Rojava)
Facilitated by Mason Herson-Horvath, Solidarity Research Center
Speakers
Kali Akuno
he/himKali Akuno is co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a network of worker cooperatives and community-led programs that sustain and grow a democratic, just and sustainable economy in Jackson, MS. Among these programs is the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust, which allows community members to collectively steward the land and creates opportunities for affordable property ownership.
Kali served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city.
Kali is co-editor of “Jackson Rising: the Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, MS,” and the author of numerous articles and pamphlets including the Jackson-Kush Plan: the Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy,” “Until We Win: Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Era,” “Operation Ghetto Storm: Every 28 Hours report,” and “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities for Self-Defense”.
Rebecca Tarlau
Rebecca Tarlau is Associate Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a member of the National Coordination of the U.S.-Friends of the MST. Her research focuses on the role of non-formal and formal education in social and racial justice movements, in the United States and Latin America. She is the author of Occupying School, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (2019, Oxford University Press) and the forthcoming book Teacher Organizing Across the Americas: Diverse Strategies for Transformation Unions, Schools and Societies.
Arthur Pye
he/himArthur Pye is a writer and community organizer based in the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year living in North-East Syria studying the Rojava revolution, and is a member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava. His writing can be found in Strange Matters Magazine.
Mason Herson-Hord
he/himMason Herson-Hord is the program director of the Institute for Social Ecology and an organizer and writer in Detroit, MI. He is a co-founder of the Symbiosis federation and was previously lead organizer of the Motor City Freedom Riders. His work, focusing primarily on movement-building and ecological philosophy, has been published by The Next System Project, In These Times, The Ecologist, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Socialist Forum, ROAR Magazine, and The Journal of World-Systems Research.
