This arti­cle was first post­ed at Medi​um​.com.

By working as a network, cities can turn what would have been isolated acts of resistance into a national movement with a multiplier effect.

“I want New York­ers to know: we have a lot of tools at our dis­pos­al; we’re going to use them. And we’re not going to take any­thing lying down.” On the morn­ing after Don­ald Trump was declared the vic­tor in the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, May­or of New York, Bill de Bla­sio, wast­ed no time in sig­nal­ing his inten­tion to use the city gov­ern­ment as a bul­wark against the pol­i­cy agen­da of the Pres­i­dent-Elect. The move made one thing very clear; with the Repub­li­can Par­ty hold­ing the House and Sen­ate, and at least one Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion in the pipeline, it will fall to America’s cities and local lead­ers to act as the insti­tu­tion­al front­line of resis­tance against the Trump administration.

How­ev­er, cities can be more than just a last line of defense against the worst excess­es of an author­i­tar­i­an cen­tral gov­ern­ment; they have huge, pos­i­tive poten­tial as spaces from which to rad­i­cal­ize democ­ra­cy and build alter­na­tives to the neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic mod­el. The urgent ques­tions that pro­gres­sive activists in the States are now ask­ing them­selves are, not just how to fight back against Trump, but also how to har­ness the momen­tum of Bernie Sanders’ pri­ma­ry run to fight for the change he promised. As we con­sid­er poten­tial strate­gies going for­ward, a look at the glob­al con­text sug­gests that local pol­i­tics may be the best place to start.

The elec­tion of Trump has not occurred in a vac­u­um. Across the West, we are wit­ness­ing a whole­sale break­down of the exist­ing polit­i­cal order; the neolib­er­al project is bro­ken, the cen­ter-left is van­ish­ing, and the old left is at a loss for what to do. In many coun­tries, it is the far right that is most suc­cess­ful in har­ness­ing people’s desire to regain a sense of con­trol over their lives. Where pro­gres­sives have tried to beat the right at its own game by com­pet­ing on the bat­tle­ground of the nation state, they have fared extreme­ly poor­ly, as recent elec­tions and ref­er­en­da across Europe have shown. Even where a pro­gres­sive force has man­aged to win nation­al office, as hap­pened in Greece in 2015, the lim­its of this strat­e­gy have become abun­dant­ly clear, with glob­al mar­kets and transna­tion­al insti­tu­tions quick­ly bul­ly­ing the Syriza gov­ern­ment into compliance.

In Spain, how­ev­er, things are dif­fer­ent. In 2014, activists in the coun­try were wrestling with a sim­i­lar conun­drum to their coun­ter­parts in the U.S. today: how to har­ness the pow­er of new social and polit­i­cal move­ments to trans­form insti­tu­tion­al pol­i­tics. For prag­mat­ic rather than ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, they decid­ed to start by stand­ing in local elec­tions; the so-called ​“munic­i­pal­ist wager.” The bet paid off; while cit­i­zen plat­forms led by activists from social move­ments won may­oral­ties in the largest cities across the coun­try in May of 2015, their nation­al allies, Unidos Podemos, stalled in third place at the gen­er­al elec­tions in Decem­ber lat­er that same year.

In Spain, this net­work of ​“rebel cities” has been putting up some of the most effec­tive resis­tance to the con­ser­v­a­tive cen­tral gov­ern­ment. While the state is bail­ing out the banks, refus­ing to take in refugees and imple­ment­ing deep cuts in pub­lic ser­vices, cities like Barcelona and Madrid are invest­ing in the coop­er­a­tive econ­o­my, declar­ing them­selves ​“refuge cities” and remu­nic­i­pal­iz­ing pub­lic ser­vices. U.S. cities have a huge poten­tial to play a sim­i­lar role over the com­ing years.

Rebel cities in the USA

In fact, rad­i­cal munic­i­pal­ism has a proud his­to­ry in the U.S. One hun­dred years ago, the ​“sew­er social­ists” took over the city gov­ern­ment of Mil­wau­kee, Wis., and ran it for almost 50 years. They built parks, cleaned up water­ways and, in con­trast to the tol­er­at­ed lev­el of cor­rup­tion in neigh­bor­ing Chica­go, the sew­er social­ists instilled into the civic cul­ture an endur­ing sense that gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to work for all the peo­ple, not just the wealthy and well-connected.

More recent­ly, too, cities have been prov­ing their abil­i­ty to lead the nation­al agen­da. In the last few years alone, over 200 cities have intro­duced pro­tec­tions against employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion based on gen­der-iden­ti­ty and 38 cities and coun­ties have intro­duced local min­i­mum wages after local ​“Fight for 15” campaigns.

Now we need a dual munic­i­pal­ist strat­e­gy that includes both sup­port­ing and putting pres­sure on exist­ing pro­gres­sive city gov­ern­ments from the streets, and stand­ing new can­di­dates with new pol­i­cy plat­forms in upcom­ing local elec­tions so that we can change insti­tu­tion­al pol­i­tics from within.

Why cities?

There are a num­ber of rea­sons why city gov­ern­ments are par­tic­u­lar­ly well-placed to lead resis­tance to Trump­ism. Most obvi­ous­ly, much of the pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion to Trump is phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed in cities. With their younger, more eth­ni­cal­ly diverse demo­graph­ics, urban vot­ers swung heav­i­ly against Trump and, in fact, played a large role in hand­ing Hillary Clin­ton the major­i­ty of the nation­al pop­u­lar vote. Not only did Clin­ton win 31 of the nation’s 35 largest cities, but she beat Trump by 59% to 35% in all cities with pop­u­la­tions of over 50,000. In most of urban Amer­i­ca, then, there are pro­gres­sive majori­ties that can be har­nessed to chal­lenge Trump’s tox­ic dis­course and pol­i­cy agenda.

But alter­na­tive poli­cies will not be enough to cre­ate an effec­tive chal­lenge to Trump; dif­fer­ent ways of doing pol­i­tics will also be need­ed, and local pol­i­tics has great poten­tial in this regard. As the lev­el of gov­ern­ment clos­est to the peo­ple, munic­i­pal­i­ties are unique­ly able to gen­er­ate new, cit­i­zen-led and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry mod­els of pol­i­tics that return a sense of agency and belong­ing to people’s lives. This new process must have fem­i­nism at its heart; it must rec­og­nize that the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal are inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed, some­thing that is clear­er at the local lev­el than at any other.

It’s for this rea­son that the munic­i­pal­ist move­ment need not be lim­it­ed to the largest cities. Though large cities will inevitably be strate­gic tar­gets in any ​“bot­tom-up” strat­e­gy, giv­en their eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al pow­er, all local pol­i­tics has rad­i­cal demo­c­ra­t­ic poten­tial. Indeed, some of the most inno­v­a­tive — and suc­cess­ful — exam­ples of munic­i­pal­ism around the world are found in small towns and villages.

Bring­ing the polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion back to the local lev­el also has a par­tic­u­lar advan­tage in the cur­rent con­text; the city pro­vides a frame with which to chal­lenge the rise of xeno­pho­bic nation­al­ism. Cities are spaces in which we can talk about reclaim­ing pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty for a demos oth­er than the nation, where we can reimag­ine iden­ti­ty and belong­ing based on par­tic­i­pa­tion in civic life rather than the pass­port we hold.

Why a net­work of rebel cities?

By work­ing as a net­work, cities can turn what would have been iso­lat­ed acts of resis­tance into a nation­al move­ment with a mul­ti­pli­er effect. Net­works like Local Progress, a net­work of pro­gres­sive local elect­ed offi­cials, allow local lead­ers to exchange pol­i­cy ideas, devel­op joint strate­gies, and speak with a unit­ed voice on the nation­al stage.

On the issue of racial equi­ty, an essen­tial ques­tion giv­en the racist nature of Trump’s cam­paign and pol­i­cy plat­form, cities across the U.S. have already start­ed to mobi­lize to com­bat Islam­o­pho­bia, as part of the Amer­i­can Lead­ers Against Hate and Anti-Mus­lim Big­otry Cam­paign, a joint project of Local Progress and the Young Elect­ed Offi­cials Action Net­work. The cam­paign push­es for local poli­cies to tack­le hate crimes against Mus­lims, includ­ing the mon­i­tor­ing of reli­gious bul­ly­ing in schools, inter­cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion pro­grammes, and coun­cil res­o­lu­tions con­demn­ing Islam­o­pho­bia and declar­ing sup­port for Mus­lim communities.

Cli­mate change will be anoth­er con­tentious issue over the com­ing years. While much has been made of the pol­i­cy impli­ca­tions of Trump’s claim that glob­al warm­ing was invent­ed by the Chi­nese, it has been local admin­is­tra­tions, rather than the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, that have led on the envi­ron­men­tal agen­da over recent years. Six­ty two cities are already com­mit­ted to meet or exceed the emis­sions tar­gets announced by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and many of the largest cities in the coun­try, includ­ing New York, Chica­go and Atlanta have set emis­sions reduc­tions goals of 80 per­cent or high­er by 2050. U.S. may­ors must con­tin­ue on this path, work­ing with inter­na­tion­al net­works of cities like ICLEI and UCLG to exchange good prac­tices and to lob­by for direct access to glob­al cli­mate funds in the absence of sup­port from the fed­er­al government.

Even on issues that are under the juris­dic­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, like immi­gra­tion, cities have some room for maneu­ver. For exam­ple, although Trump has pledged to deport all undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants from the U.S., 37 ​“sanc­tu­ary cities” across the U.S. are already lim­it­ing their coop­er­a­tion with Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment detain­er requests to reduce depor­ta­tions. The may­ors of New York and Los Ange­les have already pledged to con­tin­ue with this prac­tice, and De Bla­sio has promised New York­ers that the city will pro­tect the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of users of the city ID-card scheme and con­tin­ue to ensure that police offi­cers and city employ­ees won’t inquire about res­i­dents’ immi­gra­tion sta­tus, pre­dict­ing that Trump will face ​“a deep, deep rift with all of urban Amer­i­ca” if he does not re-eval­u­ate his stance on sanc­tu­ary cities.

What next?

First we must push our allies who are already in office at local lev­el, includ­ing self-iden­ti­fied ​“Sanders Democ­rats,” to use all avail­able means to act against any attempt by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to roll back civ­il lib­er­ties, cut ser­vices or sow divi­sion among com­mu­ni­ties. Such cities must work, not only to coun­ter­act the worst excess­es of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, but also to con­tin­ue to move for­ward on issues like gay rights and cli­mate change, as well as forg­ing new ground by stand­ing up to cor­po­rate inter­ests, increas­ing cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in deci­sion-mak­ing, and pro­mot­ing the social and coop­er­a­tive economies.

But we also need a new gen­er­a­tion of local lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly women and peo­ple of col­or, who are pre­pared to take the leap from protest to elec­toral pol­i­tics. The recent announce­ment by Black Lives Mat­ter activist, Neki­ma Levy-Pounds, that she will be stand­ing for elec­tion as may­or of Min­neapo­lis is an inspir­ing exam­ple of the kind of can­di­date that is need­ed; some­one with real-world expe­ri­ence and an insider’s under­stand­ing of social move­ment pol­i­tics. But the search for new local lead­ers needs to be scaled up so that there is a pipeline of can­di­dates to stand for school boards, zon­ing boards and local coun­cils in 2017 and beyond. This is some­thing that the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty is already doing suc­cess­ful­ly in many states, as well as sup­port­ing these can­di­dates in pri­ma­ry cam­paigns against Estab­lish­ment Democrats.

Final­ly, we must under­take new ways of doing pol­i­tics at the local lev­el to prove that there is an alter­na­tive to cor­po­rate lob­by­ing, secret donors and career pol­i­tics. There is no rea­son why can­di­dates should wait until tak­ing office to invite peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in deci­sion-mak­ing. Local can­di­dates should open up their pol­i­cy plat­forms to pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, inte­grat­ing demands from social move­ments and local res­i­dents. There is also no rea­son why elect­ed offi­cials should use only the most gen­er­ous inter­pre­ta­tion of the law to guide their con­duct; in Spain, the cit­i­zen plat­forms drew up their own codes of ethics for their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, includ­ing salary and term lim­its and strict trans­paren­cy require­ments. By lead­ing by exam­ple, local move­ments can send a very pow­er­ful mes­sage: there is anoth­er way.

A resur­gence of rebel cities in the U.S. would tap into a long-for­got­ten Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of rad­i­cal munic­i­pal­ism and align with a new and grow­ing inter­na­tion­al net­work of munic­i­pal­ist move­ments. Now is the time for us to seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and to reclaim democ­ra­cy from the bot­tom up.