Michael Fox & Sílvia Leindecker

Michael Fox is a freelance journalist, translator, reporter and documentary filmmaker based in South America. He is a former staff reporter for Venezuelanlaysis, a radio correspondent for Free Speech Radio News, and his articles have been published with Yes Magazine, Earth Island Journal, NACLA, The Nation online, and dozens of other magazines and websites. His work can be found here, or at his blog, www.blendingthelines.com

Sílvia Leindecker is a Brazilian philosopher, documentary filmmaker, and independent photographer who has shot for the Spanish news agency EFE, Germany’s Politik magazine, and numerous independent projects, advertisement and film productions.  She has been studying acupuncture for several years. She is a certified doula and a natural birth activist. Her blog can be found at www.momae.org

In 2007, Michael and Sílvia helped to co-found the Internet Radio Venezuela en Vivo, which broadcasted live coverage from Venezuela’s Constitutional Reform Referendum. Based now in Brazil, Michael and Sílvia have for many years been covering Latin American politics and social movements, as well as the growth in the region’s participatory democracy—cooperatives, Brazil’s participatory budgeting, and Venezuela’s communal councils.

They are the co-directors of the documentary, Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas (PM Press, 2008).  Michael is the co-author of Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots (PM Press, 2010), for which Sílvia was the lead photographer.   

For their most recent documentary, Crossing the American Crises: From Collapse to Action (PM Press, 2011), Michael and Sílvia traveled across the United States in 2008 and 2010 to capture the pulse of the nation in crisis, and to hear the response from Americans across the country.

“Michael Fox’s reporting on Latin American social movements is among the most thorough and incisive you’ll find.  Venezuela Speaks! will be an important addition to our understanding of the people behind the Bolivarian Revolution.” — Jason Mark, editor, Earth Island Journal

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from Michael & Sílvia

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Description

On September 15, 2008, the United States fell into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The same day, we set out on a trip around the country to ask the American people what they had to say about it. In 2010, we went back to see how things had changed. The financial forecasters say the recession is over, but the reality is otherwise.

Their stories reveal desperation, indignation, hope, dreams and a disastrous economic breakdown; chaos generated by a system of inequality. But the financial meltdown is just one of several human rights crises now shaking the United States—in housing, education, health care, etc. The solutions to “Crossing the American Crises” are in the hands of the people.

Featuring the Vermont Worker’s Center, LA’s Bus Rider’s Union, Santa Fe’s local business Alliance, Oakland’s Green Jobs Now, Baltimore’s United Workers, New York’s Poverty Initiative, the U.S. Social Forum, and American workers, truck drivers, farmers, homeless, ex-felons, minorities, natural disaster survivors, indigenous, immigrants, and residents from coast to coast—covering nearly 40 states across the nation. 

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Praise

“Venezuela Speaks! is a very important book in the growing literature of books on Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Almost all of the books written on this topic so far take a “top-down” perspective on what is happening in contemporary Venezuela. This book, though, provides an unfiltered participant’s perspective on Venezuela’s incredibly diverse social movements and, in the process, dispels the notion that President Chavez is the only one who counts when trying to understand Venezuela.”
–Gregory Wilpert, author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government and editor of Venezuelanalysis.com

“Michael Fox, Carlos Martinez, and JoJo Farrell cut through the mist that usually surrounds discussions of Venezuela to enter a world of impressive political and cultural diversity. Venezuela Speaks! is a geography of struggle, a sociology of passion, and an ethnography of hope, of the unrelenting insistence that people have a right to control their own lives, and that in doing so, a better world will be made.”
–Greg Grandin, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.

“The authors of this book are not starry-eyed ideologues; they are experienced activists who have traveled the world observing diverse efforts at ending poverty and injustice. They portray a Venezuela in struggle that we can all learn lessons from in our efforts to save humanity from itself.”
–Kevin Danaher, Co-Founder, Global Exchange and Green Festivals.

“Venezuela Speaks! provides a platform for Venezuelan revolutionaries to speak for themselves, to tell their own stories, to use their own words to explain the Bolivarian Revolution. Unadulterated, captivating, and a must read for anyone who wishes to truly understand today’s Venezuela and its historic political process.”
–Chesa Boudin, author of Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America and The Venezuelan Revolution: 100 Questions – 100 Answers.

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Praise

“Beyond Elections proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering documentary gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reigns of power and governing their own communities. Beyond Elections is a road map for social change, drawing from communal councils in Venezuela and social movements in Bolivia to participatory budgeting in Brazil and worker cooperatives in Argentina. The film gracefully succeeds in demonstrating that these grassroots examples of people’s power can be applied anywhere. Particularly as activists in the US face the challenges of a Obama administration and an economic crisis, this timely documentary shows that the revolution can start today right in your own living room or neighborhood.” –Ben Dangl, author of The Price of Fire and editor of  the websites Upside Down World and Toward Freedom

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Making the Rulers Obey
• Until the Rulers Obey: A review
• Until the Rulers Obey: A review on CeaseFire
• Revolution from the Inside Out
• Until the Rulers Obey: A review on Upside Down World
• Until the Rulers Obey: A review on Anarchist Studies
• Until the Rulers Obey: A review by Staughton Lynd in Z Magazine
• Grassroots Solutions to American Crises: From Collapse to Action
• Crossing the American Crisis Reviewed in The Liberal Ohioan
• Bolivarian blasts

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Interviews

• Grassroots lessons from Latin America: An Interview with Michael Fox
• Beyond Elections in the Americas on GNN
• Grassroots Lessons in Democracy: An interview with Michael Fox

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Mentions

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Blog

• Obama in Latin America: ‘Common Prosperity,’ But For Whom?
• A People’s Budget: Fighting Back on Tax Day
• Streets of Latin America Offer U.S. a Roadmap for Social Change
• The Transition to Ecosocialism
• ‘Now Is the Time’: Ramsey Clark on Cuba and Lucius Walker