Marina Sitrin

“All over the world, people are using the language of horizontalism to talk about how they’re organizing now, in assembly forums, and it implies attempts at breaking down power and upsetting hierarchy, having a form of direct democracy.”

Marina Sitrin is a writer, lawyer, militant and dreamer who has participated in the Occupy movement from its beginning and was a member of the legal team for Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park. Having lived in different parts of the Americas and currently based in New York City, she has been involved in political organizing since she was a teenager and continues to collaborate with various movements globally.

Marina has written extensively about citizen movements and specifically about the rise of horizontalism in Argentina, a radical movement that sprouted in 2001 following the economic collapse. Horizontalism, resulting from a dynamic self-management process, advocates that social structures be created, developed and maintained for an equitable distribution of management power, and that the best interests of the collective whole be reached through continuous commitment and exchange between participants. According to Marina, horizontalism presents a new form of social creation in its rejection of political programs and its desire to develop direct democracy, autonomy and new social relationships.

Sitrin is the editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (2006), an oral history of the movements that emerged in Argentina in the wake of the economic collapse, also published in Spanish and Greek. She is the author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina (2012), which delves into the challenges Argentinian movements have faced in their development of autonomy and self-organization.

Sitrin co-authored Occupying Language: The Secret Rendezvous with History and the Present (with Dario Azzellini, 2012), which observes how current militant movements draw inspiration and tools from previous historic movements. Marina and Dario are also the co-authors and editors of They Can’t Represent US! Reinventing Democracy From Greece to Occupy (2013), which gives a voice to participants from Occupy, Greece, Spain, Argentina and Venezuela, and illustrates a collective desire to create something new.

Marina’s works have been featured in various publications including The Nation, Yes! Magazine, The International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Znet, Dissent!, alternet.org, Prensa Latina and Huffington Post. She holds a JD in International Women’s Rights from CUNY Law School and a PhD in Global Sociology from Stony Brook University. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Committee on Globalization and Social change at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Marina Sitrin strongly believes in the creative power of our imagination, and that through it, most all things are possible.

Visit her website:
http://marinasitrin.com/

How Do You Measure a Dream? (Yes! Magazine article)
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/how-do-you-measure-a-dream

The Occupy Spring (Video Nation, 2 min)