Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (born 1936) is a Canadian

political activist A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...

and publisher.

Early life

Roussopoulos studied philosophy, politics, and economics at several

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

and

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

universities. He has remained institutionally independent apart from teaching two years in the late 1960s at a progressive college.

Career

Roussopoulos’s political and peace activism began in London, England. He founded in 1959 the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and organized the first post-war student demonstration in

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

. He founded and edited Canada's first quarterly peace research journal, '' Our Generation'', in 1961. Its first issue gained a circulation of three thousand and carried a preface by

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

. In 1969, Roussopoulos founded Black Rose Books, an international publishing house known for publishing works of

left-wing politics Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

and

Murray Bookchin Murray Bookchin (; January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. Influenced by G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Peter Kropotkin, he was a pioneer in the environmental ...

, among others. Bur, Justin, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Vallée Bernard, and Joshua Wolfe. 2017. Dictionnaire Historique Du Plateau Mont-Royal. Montréal, Québec: Écosociété. p. 355 The first book he published was ''The New Left in Canada'', 1969, which chronicled his experience as a major activist of the New Left in Canada in the 1960's. In a recent interview, Roussopoulos stated that the mission of the publishing house was threefold: to disseminate ideas of participatory democracy and community organizing, to publish the best radical analysis of Canadian society, to revive libertarian socialist literature long suppressed on the left. Since the 1970s, Roussopoulos has been active in radical municipalist community organizing in Montreal. He helped found the Milton-Park Citizens' Committee and contributed to a decade-long effort to prevent the destruction of a heritage six-city-block neighbourhood. The area was transformed into the largest non-profit cooperative housing project in North America, with some 1200 residents federated into 22 co-ops and non-profit housing associations on the first land trust in Canada, preventing all land speculation. Roussopoulos was a president of the University Settlement of Montreal, which sought to democratize and localize the neighbourhood economy and successfully launched a credit union, a public library, and a rooftop garden. Roussopoulos was also an active member of the Montreal Citizens Movement from 1975 to 1978, in which he advocated for the democratic decentralization of City Hall's political power into decision-making Montreal neighbourhood councils, and social housing through non-profit cooperatives. To advance libertarian municipalist ideas of

social ecology Social ecology may refer to: * Social ecology (academic field), the study of relationships between people and their environment, often the interdependence of people, collectives and institutions * Social ecological model, frameworks for depicting ...

, Roussopoulos founded Montréal Écologique (Ecology Montreal) in 1989, the first municipal green party in North America. With Serge Mongeau and Jacques Gelinas, Roussopoulos co-founded Les Editions Eco-Société in 1992. In the mid-1990s, together with Lucia Kowaluk, his life partner, he founded the ''Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal'' (Montreal Center for Urban Ecology). He later founded Société de développement communautaire de Montréal (Montreal Community Development Corporation), which incorporated the Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal, alongside ''Place Publique'' (Public Square)'','' Groupe-ressource en éco-design (Eco-design Resource Group, and ''Démocratie municipale et citoyenneté'' (Municipal Democracy and Citizenship)''.'' From 2001 to 2012, Dimitri Roussopoulos headed the Taskforce on Municipal Democracy of the City of Montreal, which proposed and drafted the Montreal Charter of Citizen Rights and Responsibilities, the first right-to-the-city charter in North America, which was later recognized by

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

. The Taskforce then adopted the first citizens' initiative for public consultation whereby petitioning citizens can obtain public consultations on issues on a wide range of public policy issues, a first in North America. Roussopoulos additionally organized five citizen summits (2001–2010) for bottom-up democracy, drawing together one thousand citizens and non-governmental organizations to advance a citizens' agenda for change. In 2009, alongside Phyllis Lambert and Dinu Bumbaru, Roussopoulos founded the ''Institute of Policy Alternatives of Montreal'', a think tank aiming to shed light on urban planning and development policy. In 2012, he founded the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology, an

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

-based network of intellectuals and activists working in various cities in Europe. In 2018, he co-curated the exhibition ''Milton-Parc: How We Did It'', presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture from September 2018 to March 2019. Currently, he serves as president of Communauté Saint-Urbain, a community project aiming to redevelop the heritage site Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, such that the site preserves its important status in the community, while attending to the needs of local residents.

Bibliography

English

* ''The Case for Participatory Democracy'', co-edited with C. George Benello, 1970 * ''The New Left in Canada'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1970 * ''Political Economy of the State – Canada, Quebec, United States'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973 * ''Canada and Radical Social Change'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973 * ''Quebec and Radical Social Change'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1974 * ''City and Radical Social Change'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1982 * ''Our Generation against Nuclear War'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1983 * ''1984 and After'', co-edited Marsha Hewitt, 1984 * ''Coming of World War Three'', 1986 * ''Radical Papers'', 1986, ''Radical Papers 2'', 1987, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos * ''Anarchist Papers'', 2001; ''Anarchist Papers 2'', 1989; ''Anarchist Papers 3'', 1990 edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos * ''Dissidence – Essays against the Mainstream'', 1992 * ''Political Ecology; Beyond Environmentalism'', 1993 * ''Public Place – Citizen Participation in the Neighbourhood and the City'', 1999 * ''The New Left – Legacy and Continuity'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2007 * ''Faith in Faithlessness – An Anthology of Atheism'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2008 * ''The Rise of Cities'', edited by and written by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2012 * ''Villages in Cities: Community Land Ownership, Cooperative Housing, and the Milton Park Story'', co-edited with Joshua Hawley, 2019

French

*''L'écologie politique – Au-delà de l'environnementalisme'', 1994 *''Au bout de l'Impasse à gauche – récits de vie militant et perspectives d'avenir'', 2007

References

External links

Black Rose BooksTransnational Institute of Social EcologyPeace magazine article by Dimitrios RoussopoulosReflections on the Occasion of Dimitri Roussopoulos’ 70th Birthday and Public Intellectuals
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roussopoulos, Dimitrios 1936 births Living people 20th-century anarchists 21st-century anarchists Activists from Montreal Anarcho-communists Canadian anarchists Canadian anti–nuclear weapons activists Canadian environmentalists Canadian people of Greek descent Canadian publishers (people) Quebec municipal politicians