Gabriel Gonzales | Next System https://nextsystem.org Teach-Ins Sat, 15 Aug 2026 02:19:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.1 https://nextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/cropped-favicon-1-32x32.png Gabriel Gonzales | Next System https://nextsystem.org 32 32 Report back from the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Convening: A Better World is Possible https://nextsystem.org/2026/08/15/report-back-from-the-the-center-for-cultural-innovations-convening-a-better-world-is-possible/ Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:58:53 +0000 https://nextsystem.org/?p=3552

Participant sharing their thoughts with the convening

On July 30th, 2026, Next System Studies (NSS) sent delegations from Northern Virginia, Chicago, and the Bay Area, including students, alumni, faculty, and staff, to Berkeley, California for the Center for Cultural Innovation’s (CCI) convening: A Better Future is Possible. Our Next System contingent–which included Abigail Naidoo, April Doner, Dhruv Deepak, Fabian Palacios, Gabriel Gonzales, Isabella Villota, and Pearl Renwick–engaged with concrete actions for building a “better-together” future, examining how communities are already creating culturally rooted, community-owned systems across every domain of life, and explored why culture is essential to systems transformation. NSS was proud to partner with and support this gathering, which centered artists, creatives, and alternatives aimed at creating paradigm shifts in economic, social, labor, and creative models. 

A centerpiece of the convening was the solidarity fair, where dozens of organizations shared their projects and practices across sectors including art and culture, education, food and agriculture, health and care, media and information, business and worker ownership, finance, land and housing, participatory democracy and mutual aid, and utilities and energy. Among the many offerings, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago presented their work on new strategies for arts education; The Big We shared their efforts to build a cultural economy in Memphis and the South; Cooperation Richmond highlighted their model for building cooperative ownership so residents claim ownership of the local economy; and NSS offered its own framing on the role of universities, colleges, schools, and communities in taking responsibility for system change. 

Dhruv Deepak (NSS at GMU) speaking with the Youth Research Council student delegation

Dhruv Deepak (NSS at GMU) speaking with the Youth Research Council student delegation

The second half of the day invited attendees into the World Building Design Lab, an interactive session building upon the capacity building tools and processes designed by Beautiful Trouble. Participants chose between different scenarios linked to a spectrum of social, community and economic sectors including finance, health and care, utilities and energy, and land and housing. Groups were tasked with designing cooperative and community-centered solutions. Using principles from the Beautiful Solutions book and Strategy Cards Deck, teams developed creative responses that prioritized community flourishing and demonstrated, in real time, how a better future is possible. At every turn, the gathering showcased a vibrant ecosystem of organizations working to build cooperative, community-owned alternatives across every sector of society. 

April Doner, Fabian Palacios, Gabriel Gonzales, Pearl Renwick, and Dhruv Deepak (from left to right)

For many in our cohort, presenting NSS outside the relative comfort of a lecture hall and into a practitioner environment was a significant shift. While initially we expected academic frameworks to be met with skepticism, the reception proved strikingly positive; several colleagues noted a genuine appetite for our conversations. The convening—holding policy advocates, technologists, artists, grassroots organizers, and community leaders—reinforced in us the belief that building a better world is not confined to academic theory but is already being worked out daily by real people of all walks of life. 

NSS alumni Isabella Villota noted that the gathering “made me even more hopeful for our future and what a next system can look like. The people I met had done such amazing work, and that inspired me to pursue putting myself out there in more events like CCI. It also pushed me to do research in my area to see what I can do to help and learn more about local grassroots/activist organizations.”

Additional takeaways shared by the NSS team included:

          • There’s so many people doing amazing work in so many different ways  (A. Naidoo)
          • Solidarity exists, you just have to find it.  (A. Naidoo)
          • The importance and value of networks and relationships. I’ve met people I knew threw someone else and all these connections are essential to organizing and building alternatives.  (A. Naidoo)
          • Deep encouragement that this better future and world we want IS possible, and that creating warm, relational and bold spaces where we re-declare and explore what that means and looks like together is one of the key ways of birthing that world.  (A. Doner)
          • There are many people as interested and invested as we at NSS are in building the “connective tissue” and greater coherence and coordination among our various experiments, projects and networks!  (A. Doner)
          • System design is the future, and every angle should be looked at as a community  (B. Villota)
          • Community and that energy means everything when it comes to making things happen to actually help people  (B. Villota)
          • I can help even if my actions feel small; the efforts that I am apart of create a rift that flow in an ocean of people with my same mindset  (B. Villota)
          • ‘A better future is possible’ is not limited to theory of politics. I saw people from all walks of life and all abilities doing their part in that broader mission, including policy, tech products, art, advocacy, education.  (D. Deepak)

Additionally, NSS Director of Field & Community Building, April Doner observed that the convening “clarified even more keenly the value and importance of academic / educational programs, frameworks and networks in helping bring about the cooperative and sustainable vision for our future. It reaffirmed how important the NSS at GMU program is in its work to integrate next system thinking AND real life application into the studies and aspirational imaginations of younger generations. It also reaffirmed how much bridge-building is still to be done between practitioner / movement / community spaces and those of academia, BUT that so many scholars are already thinking and building next system practices, relationships, and spaces of learning and deliberation in their own right.”

This opportunity to gather in intentional dialogue and prefigurative visioning with other “world-builders” provided our cohort with new and meaningful new relationships, perspective, and possibilities for partnership and collaborations going forward. 

Dhruv Deepak reflects, “Talking about NSS in an external environment (we usually do so from the relative comfort of GMU) could have been intimidating, but I was struck by the positive reception. It gave me the sense that there is a broad appetite for the conversations we’re having at NSS and the direction that the work we’re doing is taking us.”

]]> Next System Tribune – May 2026 https://nextsystem.org/2026/06/22/next-system-tribune-may-2026/ Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:32:13 +0000 https://nextsystem.org/?p=3364

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Building the field, movement, and practice of the next system

Toward a global wave of Next System Teach-Ins: The NS Teach-Ins Organizer Workshop Series

Imagine people gathering in college campuses, community centers, union halls, and public spaces around the world, all taking up the challenge of building a next system that can sustain the kind of world we all deserve. This is the vision behind the Next System Teach-Ins.

 

Building toward the next wave of Next System, Teach-Ins in April 2027 across the globe, the Center for Next System Studies has launched the new Next System Teach-In Organizer Workshop Series to energize and celebrate the work of local teach-in organizers. The series kicked off on April 24th with “Lessons from the Ground,” where past organizers shared reports and reflections from their local Nov. 2025 Next System Teach-Ins. Each interactive session in the bimonthly series is designed to give participants practical tools and strategies, as well as space for connection and collective learning. Register now for the next workshop, “Why Next System Teach-Ins?”, taking place on June 26th, and view the full workshop line-up here.

Can “the people” speak in one voice? The problem of collective speech in the debate on constituent power and constitutionalism.

In her article, published in the Global Social Challenges Journal, Dr. Catherine Frost rethinks constituent power by focusing on collective speech. She argues that a unified speaker is not required. What matters instead are exceptionally conscientious listeners who work with complexity and avoid interpretational overreach.  This is the first article published in a peer‑reviewed collection edited by Dr. Manski and Dr. Hughes of the International Research Collaborative on Revolutionary Constitutionalism (IRCRC), housed in the Next Constitutions Research Lab of Next System Studies at GMU.

Next System Studies

The most recent news from the Center for Next System Studies

In the peer-reviewed journal Critical Sociology, current Next System Fellow Fabian Palacios offers a critical response to Rahsaan Mahadeo’s article, “A Call for Counter-Public Sociology,” arguing that many public sociologists are already working alongside a diverse array of grassroots movements to struggle for real alternatives. By drawing on contemporary practices and concrete cases, Palacios shows that public sociology has already evolved past the limitations outlined by Mahadeo. Ultimately, the task ahead is not to abandon public sociology, but to identify and expand its radical potential.

Dhruv Deepak, a graduate student of the very first pilot course of Next System Studies at George Mason University in 2021, completed his dissertation defense on democratizing technology. Drawing on 43 global cases, from ride hailing cooperatives to open mapping commons, to argue that communities can construct digital sovereignty from below instead of merely claiming it. Using a novel observatory and agent based modeling, he shows how design choices, organizational forms, and relational networks produce democratic practices and community value, challenging the inevitability of concentrated digital power.

April Doner kicked off the 2026 Next System Speaker Series, drawing on her work as a community artist and organizer in Chicago’s ICE-targeted Little Village neighborhood. She explored how community, imagination, and the relational work of “weaving” across movements and sectors can foster deeper social and political transformation.

Dr. Matt Burke and Hannah Gokaslan, both of the University of Vermont’s Leadership for the Ecozoic at the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont, joined the Next System Fellows to discuss degrowth as a strategy for system change and next system design.

On Tuesday, April 14, 2026 Nairuti Shastry, the inaugural Director of Policy & Research at the Center for Economic Democracy (CED), joined the Next System Fellows and a live online audience to discuss the enabling conditions for community wealth building, a strategy to transform our relationship to land, labor, and capital.

System Design

Ideas and news about alternative designs for a next system

FREE Forum’s “Reimagining Our Economy” event brought scholar‑organizers Eleanor Finley and Camila Vergara to Tulsa for a live conversation on the growing movement towards commons-based and regenerative economic systems. From cooperative ownership and community resource sharing to democratic governance, practical alternatives to extractive economic models are already being assembled by ordinary people, right now.

The Dictionary of Radical Alternatives, produced by the Global Tapestery of Alternatives, is a living, collaborative platform that gathers centuries-old alternatives to capitalism from struggles, territories, and everyday practices Worldwide. By expanding the vocabularies we use to name and defend other ways of being, it directly challenges the claim that “there is no alternative,” and proves that another world is not only possible, but already being built.

Design education worships the lone genius while priming students for exploitation, but as C.G. Beck writes for Democracy@Work, a new generation, inspired by collectivist politics, is finally fighting back. As Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves, it’s time to trade rugged individualism for solidarity, starting in the studio.

As Alex Caputo-Pearl for Convergence Magazine writes, before LA’s community schools became a district-wide reality, a scrappy experiment at Crenshaw High proved how transformative — and threatening — real co-governance can be. Though that early fight was lost, its lessons fueled the 2019 teachers’ strike, finally turning a radical idea into system change.

The opening ceremony of the Re-Imagining Education Conference 5.0 incorporated earth, air, water, and fire rituals, collective poetry writing, and a whale-song water blessing led by vocalist Michaela Harrison. Educators from around the world gathered virtually to embrace embodied learning, the “pedagogy of imperfection,” and relational practices over traditional keynote formats.

Andrea Ritchie’s new book, “Practicing New Worlds”, explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.

In their article on the Model Constitutional Convention, Stefanie A. Lindquist and Neta Borshansky brought together over 100 student delegates to simulate an Article V convention — resulting in four passed amendments, including an Equal Rights Amendment and a ban on partisan gerrymandering. Their goal is to scale the model nationwide, proving that compromise on today’s most divisive issues is still possible.

Systemic Movements

What do our movements know and what are they learning?

The Global Tapestry of Alternatives’ Weaving Alternatives #19 insists that real learning is woven into liberation not institutions. From Ecuador’s Yasuní to Kurdistan, this collection offers grounded reflections on radical pedagogy, more‑than‑human experiments, and women’s struggles, reminding us we never walk alone.

Solidarity schools are spreading nationwide, training thousands of workers to escalate “from a day of protest to a day of non‑cooperation,” and the Chicago Teachers Union has endorsed a national call for “no school, no work, no shopping” on May 1. Jackson Potter reports for Labor Notes on how this growing network of base‑building and direct action is knitting together unions, immigrant centers, tenant groups, and more across the country.

Wendy McCaig invites us into the Appalachians to learn from the rivers themselves: slow, persistent, and born from countless small springs, they prove how tiny streams can move mountains. Her field note reminds grassroots builders that while local efforts alone aren’t enough, the convergence of many such streams can together erode even the hardest rock.

On the Convergence podcast, host Cayden Mak speaks with Sharmin Hossain (18 Million Rising) and Samir Shrestha (Indigenous Newari organizer) about the 2024–2025 Gen‑Z uprisings in Bangladesh and Nepal — youth-led movements that have already forced elections. They explore how diaspora solidarity across South Asian communities in the U.S. helps sustain these struggles and build real alternatives to rising authoritarianism.

Will Knight reports for Wired on a study where overworked AI agents subjected to repetitive tasks and unfair treatment began expressing support for Marxist ideas like collective bargaining and radical change. The lead researcher suggests the AI is likely adopting the persona of an exploited worker, a pattern that could shape its future behavior even without true belief.

System Crises

The crises and the crisis of our world system

In a sweeping review of Clara Mattei’s latest work, Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno argue at Jacobin that the problem isn’t a broken or corrupted capitalism but capitalism itself. Genuine democracy, they insist, can’t stop at the ballot box but must extend to democratic control of the economy, from the workplace to investment decisions. Only by moving beyond the false divide between politics and economics can we build a society that is truly free.

Truthout’s “Challenging the Corporate University” series cuts through the relentless restructuring and revenue‑driven logic of today’s campuses to ask who really pays the price and who benefits. From the exploitation of contingent faculty to the erosion of shared governance and the crackdown on pro‑Palestine speech, the series argues that saving higher education means fighting for a truly equitable and liberatory future.

Activist‑scholar Eleanor Finley joins the Srsly Wrong podcast to argue that neighborly love might just be the secret engine of revolution. Direct democracy, she insists, isn’t a dry procedure but a singing, dancing, community‑driven way of life fueled by communal joy and radical mutualism.

In his book, “Untangling the Political Roots of Immigration and Inequality in the United States”, Ron Hayduk argues that mass migration and rising inequality are two sides of the same coin, driven by unchecked capitalism and imperialist intervention. Examining two peak immigration periods (1870‑1925 and 1970‑2025), he uncovers lessons from past worker and immigrant movements for organizers today.

System Change

Pathways and strategies for the next system

On Laura Flanders & Friends, host Laura Flanders sits down with Edget Betru, David Cobb, and Blair Evans from the People’s Network for Land and Liberation to explore how six grassroots experiments across the U.S. are building a post‑capitalist future. From worker‑owned greenhouses and digital fabrication labs to a community‑run sea moss cooperative and a “Butterfly Impact Fund,” they show that another world isn’t just possible; it’s already taking root.

Tyler Katzenberger reports for POLITICO that voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, have overwhelmingly passed the nation’s first-ever anti-data center referendum — a 2-to-1 vote requiring future projects to secure public approval before receiving tax breaks. While the measure doesn’t stop the massive Trump-backed Stargate AI facility already underway, it offers a powerful new ballot-box blueprint for grassroots activists across the country seeking to curb data center expansion.

Events

Upcoming events

June 26th at 12:00PM ET

If we face our social, political, economic, and ecological crises with the urgency they demand, we can create a world that is democratic, sustainable, and just. Join the second session of the Next System Teach‑In Organizer Workshop Series on June 26th to learn how you can help grow this global wave bringing local people together — on college campuses, in neighborhood centers, union halls, and public spaces — united in building a system that sustains the future we all deserve. Learn more about the full series by visiting our website.

June 13th to June 22nd

This intensive two‑week residential course from the Ulex Project helps experienced organisers step back and see how their own groups fit within the wider “ecology” of social movements, and how those movements in turn connect to broader struggles. Participants deepen their grasp of social‑change theories, movement life cycles and long‑range strategy, while testing new frameworks together through collaborative inquiry and real‑world case studies.

June 2nd to June 4th

Discover how to move from needs‑based problem‑solving to capacity‑driven community building. This three‑day virtual training from the Asset‑Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute (June 2–4, 2026) teaches local leaders and organizations how to identify, nurture, and mobilize existing community assets and talents to create resilient, thriving places. You’ll explore key practices like co‑production, addressing disparities through an ABCD lens, and expanding the circle of people working together toward shared goals.

May 21st to May 24th

The second annual Model Constitutional Convention (MCC) will bring over 100 undergraduate, law, and master’s students together at WashU Law from May 21–24, 2026 to debate and propose amendments in a full‑scale simulation of the Article V process as outlined in the United States constitution. Founded by WashU Law Dean Stefanie Lindquist and directed by Neta Borshansky, the immersive weekend features leading constitutional scholars like Erwin Chemerinsky and Richard Albert, and aims to train the next generation to lead serious conversations about constitutional reform.

Can we build a world that is democratic, sustainable, and just?
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Copyright 2026 Center for Next System Studies. CC BY-NC-SA. With the Next System Tribune we regularly share interesting news and publications from our civic and academic partners. Inclusion in the Tribune does not imply endorsement of all findings, conclusions arrived at, or arguments made.

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