Imagine nine hundred and forty people sharing practices and theories in a truly horizontal manner. Imagine that all are participants in anti-capitalist struggles representing more than ten countries. Now imagine that all consider themselves and their practices autonomist. All are gathered to share in the love and passion of changing the world from a base of direct democracy and horizontalism. Imagine women and men, Indigenous and European, young and old. Imagine hundreds organized in Unemployed Workers Movements (MTDs) from Patagonia, Buenos Aires, and Salta, in neighborhood assemblies from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, in indigenous movements of Mapuche in the South of Argentina and Chile to Guarini in the North of Argentina, together with a myriad of autonomist collectives from around the globe, including Mujeres Creando (Women Creating) from Bolivia and the Landless Peasants Movement (MST) in Brazil. Imagine all of this and so much more …. You are now in the Ronda de Pensamiento Autonomo (Gathering of Autonomous Thinking), in Roca Negra, Argentina, otherwise known as Enerno Autonomo (Autonomous January).

At this time last year, Arundhati Roy closed the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with her vision that “another world is not only possible, she is on her way … if we listen very carefully, we can hear her breathing.” As this year’s social forum takes place in the Southern reaches of India, we, amongst so many hundred of others, had the privilege of participating in Enero Argentina. The depth and variety of conversations about autonomy, freedom, horizontalism, and consensus is beyond description for us, as it is still, quite literally, beyond our imagination. Conversations based in practice ranging from autonomous practices in self-organized health clinics and schools to direct actions. Discussions of political philosophy and ethics and the role of the self in the creation of the collective and of the collective in the recreation of the self. Exchanges that came to realizations that we are creating a genuinely new politics, a wonderfully new way of imagining collective thought and action, based in love and autonomy. Thinking and imagining that is beyond old conceptions of organization, imagining creating a new process, a new person, while at the same time creating a new collective. One of the things we have all been learning is the power of collective imagination. As difficult as it can be to place one’s self in a single experience of another, when we collectively discuss, learn, listen, and exchange, we begin to be able to imagine in a new way. It is no longer the “I” or the “me,” but a new we, a new way of imagining.

As one compañera so eloquently closed one of the last workshops, “In these four days … in our imagination … in our creation… we are another world.”

Amor, Imaginacion e Autonomia,

Marina Sitrin & Trip McCrossin