The immense social upheaval that spread through the world in 2011 may not have overturned the current global economic system, but it wasn’t in vain, either. It changed lives. It overthrew dictators. It sent a message to political elites and altered political environments. And it laid bare the bias of the mainstream media, pushing many citizens to seek and create alternative news sources.

ROAR Magazine is one media platform that arose with the spirit of 2011, seeking to highlight the plight of social movements around the world. At the start of the project, in December 2010, founder and editor Jerome Roos wrote that the collapse of Western capitalism was no longer just an abstraction but “an increasingly serious possibility.” And ROAR sought to ride that wave.

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Harnessing the Spirit of 2011

As protests spread across the Middle East a month later, Roos wrote about how the uprisings in the Arab world could easily “spill over across the Mediterranean, engulfing crisis-ridden Southern Europe.” He was right. As Greek anti-austerity protests and the 15M/Indignados movement erupted, ROAR followed events in Spain, Greece and elsewhere across Europe as they unfolded.

Since these early days, ROAR has told the stories of global movements, bridging the gap between on-the-ground reality and theoretical analysis. The magazine's roots are very firmly in 2011, which it recently called “a year of occupations that changed the world.”

In a recent interview, Jerome Roos spoke about how “the energy from the mass mobilizations of 2011 and after that sustained and powered ROAR” in the absence of corporate funding. The platform has proven in recent years to be at once accessible, analytical and radical. Its culture of ideological diversity, meanwhile, has created an open forum for constructive dialogue between different social movements.

On Nov. 17, 2011, for example, ROAR analyzed grassroots groups around the world as they roared into action. From uprisings in Greece to clashes in Italy, and from mass student protests to the occupation of Wall Street, Roos and his fellow volunteers found themselves in the thick of a global movement fighting to create a more socially and economically just world.

In January of 2012, Roos wrote, “We do not pretend to have any perfect alternatives or ready-made solutions to the crisis of capitalism… We believe that, ultimately, choices affecting humanity will have to be made collectively.”

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Lessons Finally Being Learned

Roos is no novice. A PhD researcher in International Political Economy at the European University Institute, he is well versed in past and present workers’ movements and he believes a few historical lessons are key to understanding the way forward.

In particular, Roos refers to the Paris Commune of 1871, when competing political currents remarkably agreed on “the necessity to dismantle the centralized state apparatus and replace it with a confederated structure of self-governing communes.” This lesson has been lost for too long, he insists, and there is still too much “fetishization of the centralized state."

In other words, progressive parties and movements have spent too much time fighting to attain, and hold on to, state power that they have failed to actually create a real worker-led alternative to capitalism.

Roos, however, has hope. In April, he wrote about how the “demise of 20th century state socialism, first in its authoritarian and now in its social-democratic form,” had opened up a new space for “a critical engagement with alternative organizational forms that lie beyond both the market and the state.” In fact, he says, “amidst all the tumult of the 21st century, the commune is staging a comeback.”

While the social movements that emerged from the 2011 square occupations in Greece and Spain are close to his heart, he says, “The Zapatistas have always been a source of inspiration, as are other indigenous and autonomous struggles across [Latin America]. And of course the Rojava Revolution and the Kurdish struggle more generally have been an incredible source of light in the middle of the darkness that is the Syrian civil war.”

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Where Occupations Meet Establishment Politics

Finally, Roos turns his attention to the United States where anti-police riots, Black Lives Matter, the Fight for $15 movement, and “the enormous enthusiasm surrounding the campaign of Bernie Sanders” have all left him “positively surprised.” ROAR has recently written a number of articles about Sanders, which all tend to show critical solidarity with his supporters and platform while stressing their limitations. Roos sums up this editorial line: “I don't necessarily feel the Bern myself, but the fact that young Americans are increasingly warming up to 'Socialism' – however flimsy its definition may be at this point – is a very positive sign.”

The Sanders campaign may be far from perfect, he says, but its unexpected success represents “a broader social development that bodes well for the future.” The passion for change among large sectors of the American population, Roos suggests, could be harnessed into a movement that continues long after the presidential elections later this year. “Young people are losing faith in capitalism and the established elite – and that is a very good first step towards real change,” he says.

ROAR has even published a call to “Occupy the Party,” insisting that “instead of treating the Democratic Party as some kind of authority with the power to co-opt our message, we should treat it like any street or park and occupy it.”

It's the type of message that ROAR has been putting forward since its inception: advocating independent thought, unity in diversity, and collective activism based on revolutionizing the way politics is done. The spirit of 2011 is still spreading, and Roos, like so many, feels we can all play a part.

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