• Sketchnote for the Transition to Practice session in the Municipalism Learning Series. Quote from Adrienne Maree Brown: "Dandelions -The dandelion flower head can change into a white, globular seed head overnight. Each seed has a tiny parachute that allows it to spread far and wide in the wind. The entire plant has medicinal properties. Dandelions are often mistakenly identified as weeds, aggressively removed, but are hard to uproot; the top is pulled but the long taproot remains. Resilience. Resistance. Regeneration. Decentralization." What lessons and ideas will you bring into your organizing? Organize beyond urgency. Engage in the cooperative development of our lives. Local relationships will help us weather accelerating crises. Power building across ideology. Rebel cities. Commit to practice of experimentation. Literature and practice together. Community of practice. Youth assemblies. Visualize local futures. Anti-Imperialist work starts locally. Practice self-governing. Imagine a confederation of municipalities. Re-engage and revive city/county politics. Learn from shared struggles in other contexts. A trio sits in conversation indoors: What exists that we can build upon? What could it look like to move beyond electoral work and appeals to the state? How do we orient to the long time horizon of this work? How do we hold this historical moment in Palestine and keep integrating the lessons of this fight?
  • Sketchnote for the Pathways to Power session in the Municipalism Learning Series. Pathways to power steps: 1. Vision, 2. Understand Context, 3. Build popular power, 4. Implement, 5. Evaluate and Iterate. Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson shares the background on how they started. Grounded in the movement for Black American sovereignty in the United States (Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and New Afrikan People’s Organization). Early efforts included: cop watch, reparations and self-defense. Historical shifts with September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 - focus moves from national to local. A surveillance camera labeled “domestic terror alert system” spies on a group of mutual aid volunteers. They wonder: “How do we adapt to move forward in this environment? How do we get the resources we need?” What we need: local control and autonomy. New efforts: Reconstruction party (with elections in NOLA and Jackson), and a new 5-year plan (with new language meant to evade censorship, grounded in social democracy and transformation). The Jackson-Kush plan emerges, based in Jackson, Mississippi. Goals: illustrate a transformative agenda with room for co-creation. Considerations for municipality selection: land access for food production, voter turnout and voting patterns, availability of defensive positions. Values: Black self-determinationl economic democracy; ecosocialism.
  • Sketchnote for the Peoples Movement Assembly session in the Municipalism Learning Series. Scene of an assembly, with skill shares, meeting spaces, and a synthesis of the process taking place. Reads: Learning rooted in liberation. Moving from experience to reflection to generalization to application. A popular education spiral asks: 1. What have our lives taught us about the world to share with others? 2 Are there patterns across our experiences? 3. What can help us understand these patterns? 4. What skills do we need? 5. How can we take action? Participatory democracy practices should be: accessible, equitable, significant. Ex: participatory budgeting and policy-making, policy juries, and ballot initiatives. Woven throughout: culture as strategy and radical hospitality. Before, during, after cycle includes: prep (agendas); relationship building; action (archiving); organizing; learn and strategize; evaluation (debrief). The assembly is grounded in lived experience of participants, with trusted leadership to hold space. It is decolonial and decentralized, with nothing pre-determined. The process generates the focus. Creates: shared analysis, vision of the future, action plans, and growing movement governance. The synthesis process listens for weight, volume, and frequency of ideas. Each assembly builds on the last. A timeline exists beyond it with shocks (ex: Hurricane Katrina), Slides (wage stagnation), and Shifts (movement convergences) along the way.
  • Sketchnote for the Base Building session in the Municipalism Learning Series. An apartment building where someone is door-knocking. Reads: “Political activation of the population makes revolutionary change and pre-figures democracy.” A person is reading a text from Cooperation Jackson’s strategy in “Build and Fight”: “Economic democracy and the transition to ecosocialism have to come from below… communities have to drive the social transformation process through self-organization.” Key Elements of strategic escalation: Confidence (sense of agency and belief that change is possible); Commitment (collective dedication to the work); and Capacity (aka people power), where commitment and confidence feed capacity. Ideolog of Base-building. How not to base-build: ideological sects with shared politics only, and “Tailism” (following the masses). Models for growing your base: Politicized class organizations (ex: tenant unions), and Insurgent Public Sphere (ex: Participatory budgeting assemblies). Scale and Federation models for place-based organizing: Bottom-up process, and Platform Organization at city level that roots locally. A community group writes their goals on a board: mutual aid, community garden, and block clean-up. Another goal looms: the 3.5% rule for active participants.
  • Sketchnote for the Decoding Municipalism session in the Municipalism Learning Series. Shows an aerial view of a community with a city hall, community gardens and an outdoor gathering place. Reads: “Municipalism is about reinventing governance, confronting institutions and democratizing them. It is an experiment in transformation, local radical democracy, and self-governance, rooted in interdependence. Who are the Municipalists: Murray Bookchin; Barcelona en Comu; Los Angeles for All; Global Networks; and North American roots in Black and Indigenous self-governance. What municipalists do: Direct democracy, dual power, civic platforms, and movement work (includes supporting mutual aid, tenants unions, degrowth, permaculture, and solidarity economy projects). Dilemmas: What kind of political system does a post-capitalist future call for? What do we call ourselves? Are we revolutionary or reformist? How should our political system relate to the economy? Democracy: Is this idea inclusive or alienating? How do we ensure social justice within direct democracy?
  • Sketchnote for the Mapping Local Power session in the Municipalism Learning Series. A collection of signs and banners respond to the question: “How do we define power?” Michel Foucault: Sovereign, Disciplinary, Biopower. Power is: a social relation; productive; omnipresent in and expressed through the social body; strategic and war-like exercise. Gramsci: Hegemonic, maintained by coercion and consent. Antonio Negri: Constituted vs constituent. Three faces: visible (decision-making); hidden (agenda setting); invisible (shaping public opinion). Power to (individual agency); Power within (self-worth and dignity); Power With (collective agency). Dual power: resist and build. Frances Fox Piven: Interdependent Power (change through generative crisis). Anti-power. Limits to municipal power: U.S. (Home Rule and Dillon’s Rule); Canada (provinces dominate cities); Puerto Rico (colonial municipal code). These limitations can be challenged. “Your map of power from above and below should inform your municipalist strategy.” A blackboard shows a movement ecosystem map by Ayni Institute. Elements: Inside game; personal transformation; alternatives; mass protest; structure organizing. Flipchart brainstorm by Los Angeles for All: Building a yelp of social movements.
  • Sketchnote for the Assembly session in the Municipalism Learning Series.

Michelle Sayles is a socially-engaged artist and visual communicator. Her work was included in the graphic medicine anthology, El Viaje Más Caro/ The Most Costly Journey.

Illustrated portrait of a white woman with wavy shoulder-length hair, drawn in pinks, blues and yellow.
Sketchnotes. Projects.

Sign up for blog updates:

All artwork is posted with descriptive alt-text to be accessible to people who use screen readers. Learn how to create more welcoming digital spaces by writing creative image descriptions with this resource: ‘Alt-Text as Poetry‘.