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Beyond Elections is a new feature-length documentary by Michael Fox & Sílvia Leindecker, distributed PM Press. Watch Film.

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Além das Eleições é um novo documentário por Michael Fox e Sílvia Leindecker, distribuído por PM Press. Olhar Film.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

South of the Ballot Box

A Review of Beyond Elections by NACLA

by Todd Miller

Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas (DVD, 2008), a documentary film directed, filmed, and produced by Silvia Leindecker and Michael Fox, PM Press/Estreito Meios Productions,104 mins.


After the midterm elections in November, headlines throughout the United States trumpeted the news of the great Republican comeback. The voters had spoken, and once again it was time to go home and wait until the next opportunity to vote. But what if elections weren’t the exclusive focus of democratic practice? Anyone interested in the question of radical democracy, more in practice than in theory, would do well to watch Beyond Elections. The documentary turns to the urban neighborhoods, rural communities, immigrant organizations, and worker collectives that span the Americas, from Argentina to the Bronx—all of them experimenting with collective decision making in the spaces where they live and work.

The filmmakers travel to many of the same places that Oliver Stone covered in his documentary South of the Border (2009), and their film serves as a good supplement to Stone’s depiction of the Latin American left. Call it South of the Ballot Box: Unlike Stone’s documentary, which is dominated by exclusive interviews with presidents from the region, Beyond Elections focuses on ordinary people, particularly those involved in social movements and organized communities and neighborhoods—the very force of people who brought left-leaning leaders to power to begin with. Democratic practice in this documentary is an everyday affair, involving countless meetings, assemblies, conversations, and arguments.

The film begins in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where community-based assemblies decide on public budgets. Started in 1989, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre—also the home of the World Social Forum—is a process by which ordinary citizens identify and prioritize community needs such as housing, economic development, infrastructure, health, recreation, and culture, and help allocate public funds to address those needs. Budgets are hammered out not in board rooms, but assembly halls. It isn’t always pretty. These assemblies often bring together more than 1,000 people into crowded assembly halls and gyms and things often get raucous and emotional as communities debate the most pressing and sometimes divisive issues.

The next stop is Venezuela, where the film looks at the communal councils established by federal law in 2006. Since then, tens of thousands of such councils have been established in the country, and critical decisions about projects and development plans are made at a neighborhood level in citizen assemblies, optimally by consensus, however voting is often used. Community spokespeople to carry out the projects are also elected in these meetings, which can involve the participation of as many as 150 people drawing from 400 families in any given area.

Like Brazil’s participatory-budget assemblies, Venezuela’s communal councils are elected within neighborhoods and directly oversee policies, projects, cooperatives, and work committees, while coordinating with and receiving funding directly from different levels of government. “We are the ones who know the problems in our community,” says Cecilia Rodríguez, a communal council member from Caracas, “so who better than us to organize the community and to improve our community and do our own projects?” The film’s coverage of this localized version of participatory democracy, promoted by the Venezuelan federal government, offers a good dose of nuance to the North American view of Venezuela as autocratic.

Beyond Elections also examines labor democracy. Borrowing footage from The Take (2004), Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis’s film about an Argentine work cooperative, it documents factories taken over by workers, who not only share the work of managing the factory but also the profits. “We’ve formed a democratic business,” says José Abellí, a leader in the recuperated factory movement in Argentina, “a business of people, not capital.” In New York, the filmmakers talk to the Green Worker Cooperatives in the South Bronx, which are geared toward creating worker-owned and environmentally friendly cooperatives as a response to the area’s chronically high unemployment and history of environmental racism. The filmmakers also interview members of immigrant organizations such as the Movement for Justice in El Barrio, which started by fighting gentrification in the East Harlem neighborhood in New York, but now are confronting some of their most difficult problems in the United States—particularly draconian immigration laws, low wages, and wage theft.

While most Latin American countries have had electoral democracies at least since the 1990s, “people really didn’t have real decision-making power—not for the future, not in the planning, nor in the development of the country,” according to Venezuelan Adalnel Pantoja, community social worker for the Caracas mayor’s office. But now many communities, towns, cities, and even countries have sought not to reject electoral democracy, but to move beyond it and build people power—what they insist is true democracy. This is inevitably a small-scale effort, at least for now. As Brazilian political science professor Leonardo Avritzer says in the film: “The question today in the southern countries is how to think about the democratization of things like the budget, health policies, education policies, urban policies, and the democratization of life where you live.”

Beyond Elections plunges into the rowdy realm of popular democracy, where opinions clash and people take the idea of consensus so seriously that they are willing to engage in long, painstaking meetings. The filmmakers omit no opinions from the debates they cover, taking the time to show participants explaining the projects under discussion, providing very little narration. The film reflects the ambitious vision of the democracy it depicts, making the film rather lengthy, almost two hours. Although the film sprawls a bit, this is also the film’s beauty—the close attention it pays to the wide-spanning locales where new concepts of democracy are arising and being worked out.

In doing so, comparisons with U.S. notions of democracy are inevitable. Without describing the U.S. political system in much detail as a point of comparison, the film will nonetheless come across as a critique of it. Electoral democracy, so triumphantly glorified and even promoted abroad, is not only insufficient but also a betrayal of democracy “in the name of democracy,” as Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano says in the film. Indeed, the United States has created a monopoly on the definition of democracy, says Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos. “But in reality,” he says, “democracy is a work in progress.”


Todd Miller is NACLA’s editorial assistant.

Screenings

To schedule a screening contact mike(at)beyondelections.com

Previous Screenings

Outubro 17, 2009- Novo Hamburgo, Brasil
Sabado, Outubro 17 @ 18hr

Seminário Estadual do Acampamento Intercontinental de Juventude - Forum Social Mundial, 10 Anos (FSM)
Sociedade Gaúcha Lomba Grande
Novo Hamburgo, RS

Outubro 15, 2009- Esteio, Brasil
Quinta-Feira, Outubro 15 @
18h30
Casa de Cultura Lufredina Araújo Gaya

Esteio, RS
*Debate com os diretores

September 28, 2009- Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa
Monday, September 28 @ 4pm
The Institute for Democracy in Africa (IDASA)

357 Visagie Street (corner Prinsloo), Pretoria
**Q&A w/ Directors, Michael Fox & Sílvia Leindecker

September 16, 2009- Austin, Texas
Wednesday, September 16 @ 8pm
MonkeyWrench Books,
110 E. North Loop, Austin, Texas

July 19-21, 2009 - Cape Town, South Africa

The While You Were Sleeping Collective will be hosting screenings of Beyond Elections at the Labia Cinema on Orange Street, Cape Town, on the following dates:
Sun 19 July 6:15pm
Mon 20 July 8:30pm
Tue 21 July 8:30pm


Julho 20, 2009 - Porto Alegre, Brasil
Segunda-feira, 20 de julho, as 19:30
Sala de cinema do SindBancários (CineBancários)
Rua General Câmara 424 - Centro - Porto Alegre.

Julho 21, 2009 - São Leopoldo, Brasil
Terça-feira, 21 de julho, as 10:00 am
São Leopoldo Fest, Espaço Pensamento
Localização

La Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala, 6 de Mayo, 2009, 7pm, Blanco y Negro: 7pm, Zona 1, 9a calle entre 6a y 7a Avenida, Pasaje Aycinena.

Atlanta, Georgia, 4th Annual Latin American Caribbean Film Festival 2009

Orlando, Florida,
February 13, 2009, 3:30pm, FL Interactive Entertainment Academy, Orlando Latin American Film Festival

World Social Forum, Belém, Brasil, January 31, 2009, 4:30pm, The Federal University of the Amazon (UFRA) Theater – CASA PAN AMAZÔNICA


2008


Baltimore, Sept. 11, 2008, 6:30 pm, Red Emma's

New York City, Sept. 14, 2008, 7pm
, Bluestockings
Chicago, Sept. 16, TBA

Milwaukee, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, 7pm,
People's Book Cooperative

Madison, Friday, Sept. 19, 2008, 7 pm,
Electric Earth Coffeehouse (546 W. Washington Ave, Madison, WI)

Minneapolis, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008, 10 am,
Resource Center of the Americas
Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008, 7pm, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul
(Davis Lecture Hall, Student Center, SW corner of Grand & Snelling) MAP

Bay Area, California, Sept. 27-30
Global Exchange

San Diego, Oct. 1-3
Monte Perdido

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Friday, Oct. 10, 2008, 7pm,
The Santa Fe Complex. Click for directions.

Oklahoma City, Monday, Oct. 13, 2008,
house party, call for directions

New Orleans, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008, 6pm,
Lowernine.org, 6018 El Dorado Street

Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008, 5:30pm
, Little Five Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave, Room 105 (call 404.610.2807 for more information) Presented by the Latin American and Caribbean Community Center

Asheville, North Carolina, Monday, Oct. 20
, 2008, 7:30pm, Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company (77 Coxe Avenue)

Washington DC, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008, 7:30pm, The People's MEDIA Center, ( 3142 Georgia Ave., NW, Located between Kansas & Taylor, 4 blocks North of Petworth Metro
Green/Yellow Line Metro. Bus #64, 70, 71)

Philadelphia, PA, Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, 7pm, Prometheus Radio Project (Calvary Church, 48th & Baltimore Ave. West Philly)

New York City, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, 7pm, The IRT Theater (154 Christopher St #3B, btw Washington & Greenwich Streets)

New Paltz, NY, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, 5pm, SUNY, New Paltz,

(CSB Auditorium, click for directions)
Amherst, Mass., Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008, 7:30pm, Hampshire College (Franklin Paterson Hall in the East lecture Hall)

Boston, Mass., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008, 8pm, MIT (Building 7, 4th floor, Audio Visual Lab, 77 Mass. Ave)

Washington DC, Saturday, November 1, 2008, 11 pm,
Busboys & Poets (5th & K, 1025 5th St, NW)

Arlington, VA, Sunday, November 2, 2008, 8pm, Busboys & Poets (Busboys @ Shirlington,
4251 South Campbell Ave, Arlington, VA)


Other Beyond Election Presentations
*CANADIAN PREMIER*
Halifax, Canada,
Thursday, October 9th, 2008, 7 pm, Weldon Law Building, 6061 University Ave, Room 105

Toronto, Canada, Thursday, October 16, 2008, 7:30- 9:30pm, Learning Democracy by Doing Conference, (University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. West)

Burlington, Vermont, October 16, 2008, 7pm, Burlington College (95 North Avenue, Burlington)

St. Paul, MN, Friday, Dec 5, 2008 • 7 PM, House Party! 464 Dayton Ave #4, St Paul, MN 55102, (Contact Sarah Humpage, 651-592-9693 cell or 651-340-9336) Resource Center of the Americas

Los Angeles, CA, Saturday, Dec 6, 2008 • 7 PM, Eastside Café, 5469 No. Huntington Dr., El Sereno, CA 90032

Oakland, CA, Tuesday, Dec 16, 2008 • 7 PM, Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave
OAKLAND (Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas)