From June 14 to November 25, 2006, Oaxaca City in the Mexican state of Oaxaca was in rebellion, with the government essentially in exile while the citizens occupied space and championed an alternative form of government based on autonomy and genuine democracy. The People Decide: Oaxaca's Popular Assembly chronicles the five-month uprising in Oaxaca with a particular focus on the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO). Reporter Nancy Davies with Narco News details how the Popular Assembly grew out of a teacher's strike and subsequent government repression to become a movement with widespread popular support and incorporated the dreams and desires of wide sections of the population.

Davies reports on many of the conflicts in the rebellion, but spends considerable time examining APPO and its methods. By reporting on APPO, Nancy Davies shares information that is missing from much of the reporting on the rebellion. She forgoes the usual "score card" that accompanies reporting--even on the Left--of popular movements; she is less interested in tallying the numbers of arrests, the numbers of injuries, or the numbers of buildings occupied than she is in drawing out the more lasting components of the rebellion. Street battles come and go and live on in movements' popular consciences, but it is often the experiments in radical structures that have lasting impacts on their participants.

Davies explores at length how APPO functioned, sharing with readers how the movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of people for "megamarches" while at the same time trying to incorporate similar numbers of people into the movement's decision-making structures. The first Popular Assembly took place on June 17--three days after open confrontation with the state--involved 170 people representing 85 organizations. Invitations went out to "union members, social and political organizations, NGOs, collectives, human rights organizations, parents, tenant farmers, municipalities, and citizens of the entire state of Oaxaca" according to Davies and a second assembly took place six days later. The Assembly functioned as a way of making demands and dealing with the state, in this case declaring that Oaxaca's governor must go and rejecting a settlement position offered by the state. APPO built off a tradition of "open citizen assemblies" that like APPO, rejected the participation of political parties and frequently addressed problems ignored by the state. Throughout the rebellion, Davies chronicled the decrees of APPO and gave updates on how it was functioning, offering an important contribution on a subject that was ignored elsewhere. APPO consistently grew and was able to incorporate more people into its decision-making structure and shows that despite the myths of "inefficiency," forms of direct decision-making can flourish.

Another interesting aspect of the struggle is that the popular movement took over corporate media outlets and put them in the service of the movement. Rather than be content with coverage that sought to defame, ridicule, and minimize the movement, those involved in the movement took over radio and television stations and kept them on the air broadcasting information about the movement. It was not uncommon to hear ordinary people calling into radio shows talking about solidarity, their experiences with state repression, and the difficulties of everyday life in one of Mexico's poorest states. At the same time, occupied television stations broadcast footage from the movement as well as documentaries about other struggles around the world. The state did eventually recognize the importance of these occupied media outlets and eventually took them back, but it is a compelling strategy for movements everywhere that experience the limits of the corporate media's distortions.

While social conditions are considerably different in Oaxaca verses the United States, The People Decide offers inspiration to those doing organizing work in the US. It offers a glimpse of what we can (and should) build towards--a truly innovative form of self-government that makes the state obsolete while at the same time empowering people. In the rebellion, citizens were not afraid to fight back and they valiantly resisted state repression and took their struggle in new directions, including building APPO as a decision-making organization with the popular basis to replace the government. The prospects of such a rebellion occurring in the United States at the present are of course quite slim, but with organizing that emphasizes autonomy, democracy, people power, and perhaps most importantly, a willingness to imagine new tactics and strategies, those living outside of Oaxaca can learn from the rebellion and incorporate some of its lessons in our own work. To that end, Davies book is an essential reminder of the fact that capitalism has not won and that it continues to be contested around the world.

Nancy Davies, The People Decide: Oaxaca's Popular Assembly, (Narco News Books, 2007).