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{{short description|Canadian activist and publisher (born 1936)}}
'''Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos''' (born 1936) is a ], ], writer, editor, publisher, community organizer, and public speaker. Educated in philosophy, politics and economics at several Montreal universities and London. Roussopoulos has sought to keep himself free from any academic confinement, and apart from having taught for two years in the late sixties at a college that followed the progressive education philosophy of ], he has remained institutionally independent.<ref>Au Bout de L’Impasse a Gauche, Normand Baillargeon et Jean-Marc Piote, Editions Lux, Montreal, 2007</ref>
{{use American English|date=May 2022}}
{{use mdy dates|date=May 2022}}


'''Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos''' (born 1936) is a Canadian ] and publisher.
==Life and Work==


==Early life==
He founded, in 1959, the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Canada, having organised a student demonstration in the capital, Ottawa, on December 25 of that year. The CUCND grew quickly and established 22 campus chapters across the country.{{fact}} He remained the Federal Chairman until 1964, and was organizer of a 64-hour vigil in front of the House of Commons in Ottawa, when a 150,000-signature petition was handed to the Prime Minister, ], which urged Canada not to acquire nuclear weapons. The Pearson Liberal government did acquire nuclear warheads for the Bomarc B missiles, but the Liberal government, with ] as prime minister, removed all nuclear weapons from Canada.
Roussopoulos studied philosophy, politics, and economics at several ] and ] universities. He has remained institutionally independent apart from teaching two years in the late 1960s at a progressive college.<ref>Au Bout de L’Impasse a Gauche, Normand Baillargeon et Jean-Marc Piote, Editions Lux, Montreal, 2007.</ref>


==Career==
Roussopoulos founded and edited Canada’s first peace research quarterly journal in 1961, '']''. Its first issue gained a circulation of 3000{{fact|date=March 2014}} and was prefaced by ]. The journal evolved into an international new left journal, titled ''Our Generation''. By the mid-sixties the journal evolved further into a journal on the theory and practice of anarchism, ceasing publication in 1992. In its closing years, the journal had a subscription list of 2800 in over a dozen countries.{{fact|date=March 2014}}
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 ].<ref>Campbell Windle, Victoria. "We of the New Left: A Gender History of the Student Union for Peace Action from the Anti-Nuclear Movement to Women's Liberation." PhD dissertation.</ref> He founded and edited Canada's first quarterly peace research journal, '']'', in 1961. Its first issue gained a circulation of three thousand and carried a preface by ].<ref>{{Cite web |last=McGillis |first=Ian |title=Montreal's Expozine and Black Rose Books swim against the modern tide |work=] |date=2016-11-11 |url=https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/montreals-expozine-and-black-rose-books-swim-against-the-modern-tide |language=en-CA |access-date=2022-04-06 |df=mdy-all |archive-date=2016-12-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161212192938/http://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/montreals-expozine-and-black-rose-books-swim-against-the-modern-tide |url-status=live }}</ref>


In 1969, Roussopoulos founded Black Rose Books, an international publishing house known for publishing works of ] by ] and ], among others.<ref name="auto1"> Bur, Justin, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Vallée Bernard, and Joshua Wolfe. 2017. Dictionnaire Historique Du Plateau Mont-Royal. Montréal, Québec: Écosociété. p. 355</ref>
In 1962 he co-founded the ] (ICDP) at the ], which brought together for the first time all the non-aligned new nuclear disarmament movements and pacifist organisations in some 20 countries as a counterbalance to the pro-Soviet ]. The ICDP was among the first to protest and help organize opposition to the ]. Roussopoulos organised in August 1968 the first international meeting of the new left in ], Yugoslavia with delegates from several countries, including Frank Wolff from the German ] and Bernadine Dorne from the U.S. ]. He was an active council member throughout the history of the ICDP which mobilized world-wide opposition against the ].<ref>Spying 101 – The RMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997, Steve Hewitt, ], Toronto, 2002</ref>


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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harding |first=D. James |title=The Long Sixties |publisher=Fernwood |year=2024}}</ref>
He helped transform the CUCND into the Canadian new left movement; it become the Student Union for Peace Action , which Roussopoulos co-founded as its convention in Regina in 1964. In 1965, he organised a vigil and sit-in at the U.S. consulate in Montreal, against the ] and ] repression in the USA during the Selma to Montgomery March. This action, combining these two issues was then transformed into the largest sit-down in Montreal’s history, when French-language students (organised by the Quebec student Union, UGEQ) and McGill University students blockaded a large block in front of the U.S. consulate on MacGregor Street (now Penfield), to all traffic for several hours. Dimitri Roussopoulos was elected onto the Youth advisory council of the Universal Exposition held as ] in Montreal. He got ] removed as sponsor of the Youth Pavilion during Expo,{{fact|date=March 2014}} helped transform the pavilion exhibit to one reflecting the values of the 60s youth movement,{{fact|date=March 2014}} and got Hiroshima Day, August 6, 1967, designated as youth day on the grounds of the fair with many renown artists performing during a peace festival.{{fact|date=March 2014}} SUPA campaigned against the Vietnam war, and Canada’s complicity with the American side in supplying the U.S. military with Canadian manufactured weaponry. SUPA was a non-aligned movement during the ] and so Dimitri Roussopoulos organised protests against the U.S. export of Cruise and Pershing missiles to western Europe, often in coordination with the ] (END) movement. In October 1984, he organised the largest protest against both the new U.S. missiles for Europe and the Soviet SS20 missiles for Eastern Europe, when over 10,000 Montrealers formed a human chain of protest from the American to the Soviet consulates in the city. In June 1982 he also organised the biggest protest caravan of 42 buses travelling from Montreal to New York City to join the 1-million person protest demonstration during the opening of the Second Special United Nations Assembly on Disarmament. U.S. Customs and the State Department prevented him at the Montreal airport from flying to New York. He remained active with SUPA until its demise in 1969. The Canadian new left was involved in a wide range of projects from ant-poverty work in Kingston to opposing the exploitation of native people in Saskatchewan to anti-war activity.<ref>Left Left Left 1945-65 by Peggy Duff, Allison & Busby, London, 1971</ref>


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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/black-rose-books/|title=Black Rose Books {{*}} Montreal Review of Books|website=Montreal Review of Books|access-date=2022-03-26|archive-date=2021-06-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210603172420/https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/black-rose-books/|url-status=live}}</ref>
In 1969 he co-edited. with the American sociologist C.George Benello, a book on ]. ''The Case for Participatory Democracy'' was published as a paperback by Vintage Press, New York, in 1970.<ref>The Case for Participatory Democracy, edited by C.George Benello & Dimitrios Roussopoulos, The Viking Press, New York, 1971</ref>


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.<ref name="auto1" /> 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.<ref name="auto" /> 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.<ref name="auto1" />
In 1969, he also founded the international left-wing book publishing project, '''Black Rose Books''' which published it first book in 1970. He edited and had published ‘The New Left in Canada’, the first book on the subject. This book went through three printing selling some 5000 copies, a record for this kind of book at the time. He also played an important role in the national arena of Canadian publishing, especially among a new generation of young publishers who emerged in the 1970s challenging the hegemony of U.S. and British publishers who dominated the Canadian bookstores and libraries at the time. As such, he advocated and encouraged a new generation of radical writers to propose, through well-documented texts, an alternative view of Canadian society and its problems. In his role as a council member of the Independent Publishers Association, later the ] (ACP), whose members were publishers wholly owned by Canadians, he forcefully promoted a more activist publishing politics. Bringing insights gained from the publishing experience and history of Scandinavian publishers he promoted greater self-reliance and coalition-building with authors (hence his role in the founding of the Canadian ] Commission), librarians and booksellers. As such, he helped organise the first English-Canadian conference that brought all these actors together to discuss forming a common cultural front. It was his view that more had to be done to assure the highest profile of Canadian authored and published books in bookstores and libraries. Even though he was eventually elected as vice-president of the ACP, he left the associated frustrated and disturbed by the self-serving commercial values of most Canadian publishers.


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.<ref>Tarinski, Yvor. 2021. Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century. Montréal: Black Rose Books.</ref>
Black Rose Books also published a suppressed or forgotten series of classics in the tradition of anti-authoritarian literature, challenging the political hegemony of ], especially ] on the one hand and social democracy on the other. Thus most of the political works of ] were first introduced into Canada by Black Rose Books, as were almost all of the works of ]. Black Rose Books, for example, published the complete works of ], with introductions by the renowned ], including the first English-language translation of what in English is titled “Words of a Rebel”. The publishing programme also included publishing some 11 books on the legacy of ] (1886–1964). Since Black Rose Books was founded, almost 500 titles have been published in a variety of social sciences and humanities subject areas. He founded the French-language semi-annual journal Noir et Rouge which published only three issues from 1968 to 1970 as the third issue was seized by the police during the ] in Quebec.<ref>The Canadian Encyclopedia, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, 1988</ref> Having published over 500 titles, Black Rose Books became the largest left-wing book publisher in Canada and one of the major publishers of this type in the English-speaking world.


To advance libertarian municipalist ideas of ], Roussopoulos founded Ecology Montreal ] in 1989, the first municipal green party in North America.<ref>Herland, Karen. 1992. People, Potholes, and City Politics. Montréal: Black Rose Books.</ref> With Serge Mongeau and Jacques Gelinas, Roussopoulos co-founded Les Editions Eco-Société in 1992.<ref name="auto1" /> In the mid-1990s, together with Lucia Kowaluk, his life partner, he founded the ''Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal''. He later founded Société de développement communautaire de Montréal, which incorporated the Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal, alongside ''Place Publique,'' Groupe-ressource en éco-design, and ''Démocratie municipale et citoyenneté.''<ref name="auto1" />
Since the early 1970s, Dimitri Roussopoulos has highlighted the centrality of community organisation, neighbourhoods and cities as the primary and priority terrain for social and political change. Consequently he helped found, in downtown Montreal, the Milton-Park Citizens Committee. This group of local residents undertook a major 11-year struggle confronting ] and in effect stopping most of the destruction of a heritage six-city-block neighbourhood. The area was transformed into the largest non-profit ] 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. This struggle went on until the community victory and the completion of the extensive renovation of the greystone buildings. The right to housing, especially social housing, was combined with work to remove or reduce auto traffic from residential streets.<ref>The Empire Within by Sean Mills, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2010</ref><ref>Canada’s 1960s by Bryan D.Palmer, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2009</ref><ref>1968 Memories and Legacies of a Global Revolt, edited by Phillipp Gassert & Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. 2009</ref>


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 ].<ref name="auto1"/> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ocpm.qc.ca/fr/section-documentation/9/opinions-deposees-commission/ancien-hopital-royal-victoria|title=Ancien hôpital Royal Victoria – 9 – Opinions déposées à la commission|date=November 17, 2021|website=OCPM|access-date=March 26, 2022|archive-date=April 5, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220405034933/https://ocpm.qc.ca/fr/section-documentation/9/opinions-deposees-commission/ancien-hopital-royal-victoria|url-status=live}}</ref> Roussopoulos additionally organize 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://upstreamjournal.org/profile-dimitri-roussopoulos-lucia-kowaluk/|title=Profile: Dimitri Roussopoulos & Lucia Kowaluk|first=Gayatri|last=Kumar|date=May 1, 2012|access-date=April 18, 2022|archive-date=April 18, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220418024739/https://upstreamjournal.org/profile-dimitri-roussopoulos-lucia-kowaluk/|url-status=live}}</ref>
He also founded with Bruce Walker, a philosophy teacher at McGill University, Androgyny/Alternatives bookstore on Crescent St., in Montreal, the first bookshop to combine women’s and gay liberation literature with left-wing and anarchist literature.{{fact|date=March 2014}} Alternatives several years later was established on its own, on St. Laurent Boulevard.


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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Launch of the Institut de politiques alternatives de Montréal |url=https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/launch-of-the-institut-de-politiques-alternatives-de-montreal-538650502.html |access-date=2023-05-20 |website=newswire.ca |language=en}}</ref>
Known during the 1970s and 1980s primarily as an organizer of various urban struggles, he was a member of the ] (MCM) from 1975 to 1978 and helped advance a number of innovative new left concerns which became part of the MCM’s platform. These efforts were combined with a sit-down he organised with the MCM on ] on the issue of car and autobus traffic on residential streets. This sit-down blocked downtown traffic during rush hour for three hours during the 1978 municipal election campaign. There were no arrests. Amongst other MCM programme proposals was the ] of political power from City Hall to the neighbourhoods of Montreal in the form of decision-making neighbourhood councils. In 2003, the City of Montreal adopted decentralization as an essential part of its administrative structure whereby each of its 19 boroughs now have borough councils with their own powers, responsibilities and budgets. These councils have civic elected officials only, but are open to citizen questions and demands. One of the boroughs, the ], where Roussopoulos lives and works adopted avant-garde positions from opposing the military invasion of Iraq (later adopted as a resolution by the entire City Council and forwarded to the federal government)to establishing a participatory budget for three years (2004 – 2008).


In 2012, he founded the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology, an ]-based network of intellectuals and activists working in various cities in Europe.<ref>SodecM – Centre d'ecologie urbaine de Montreal, Rapport Annuel d'Activite,Montreal, 2004–2005</ref><ref>Le Chantier sur la Democratie de la Ville de Montreal, . {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200708171922/http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=6657,108709588&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL |date=2020-07-08 }}.</ref><ref name="TRISE interview">{{cite web | url=http://trise.org/2017/12/17/we-need-to-stand-against-green-capitalism/ | title=An interview with Dimitri Roussopoulos: We Need to Stand Against "Green" Capitalism | work=Lifo | date=December 17, 2017 | accessdate=January 25, 2018 | author=Antonopoulos, Thodoris | archive-date=January 25, 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180125134541/http://trise.org/2017/12/17/we-need-to-stand-against-green-capitalism/ | url-status=live }}</ref>
In 1989, Roussopoulos founded the first municipal green party in North America{{fact|date=March 2014}}, ], which was very much inspired by social ecology. The decentralization of power to the neighborhoods from city hall was a key new-left and social-ecology demand, and decentralization finally took place in Montreal in 2002. The ] made a film on Roussopoulos, called District 25.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www2.nfb.ca/boutique/XXNFBibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?formatid=29462&lr_ecode=collection&minisite=10002&respid=22372&helios_prod=C4WFIM1TRcwN_CZlZea43aOW:S&helios_prod_pses=ZGF0691DFDA7C9532CCFB3E30010A7FE40A1EDEEBD4ED4595BC4F7E558F3F137120B83A6802CC97F0A427618E7E8FB3B4172DA6B7F8714AF52C832C8EFDDF9E34F|title=District 25, A film by Robert Craig|accessdate=Aug 28, 2013}}</ref> In 1995-1996 he founded the Montreal Urban Ecology Center , within a social ecology framework. By raising the whole range of conflicts between urban problems, urbanisation and the surrounding ecosystem the MUEC highlighted both a new range of concerns for environmentalists and those involved in community development. The MUEC also influenced the development of civic democracy. Roussopoulos also founded ] a twice monthly community-based newspaper in downtown Montreal with a free door-to-door circulation of 35,000 (1992 to 2006). While he stepped back from the MUEC in 2006, it helped organize five citizen summits drawing together up to one thousand citizens and ] networking concerns and advancing a citizens' agenda for change. He co-founded with ] and Jacques Gelinas, Les Editions Eco-Societe, a left/ecology book publisher.<ref>Keeping to the Marketplace by John C.Bacher, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 1993</ref>


In 2018, he co-curated the exhibition ''Milton-Parc: How We Did It'', presented at the ] from September 2018 to March 2019.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|last=(CCA)|first=Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)|date=|title=Milton-Parc: How We Did It|url=https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/62239/milton-parc-how-we-did-it|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180904212523/https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/62239/milton-parc-how-we-did-it |archive-date=2018-09-04 |access-date=2020-07-08|website=cca.qc.ca|language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://communaute-saint-urbain.org/qui-sommes-nous/gouvernance | title=Gouvernance | date=October 14, 2021 }}</ref>
Since 2001 Dimitri Roussopoulos heads the Taskforce on Municipal Democracy of the City of Montreal, working with a volunteer group of citizens and bureaucrats in collaboration with the then-Mayor, ]. As such he proposed and helped draft the Montreal Charter of Citizen Rights and Responsibilities, the first right-to-the-city charter in North America which was recognized by ] as an important innovation in democracy. This was followed by the adoption of the first citizen’s 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. The citizens of Montreal have the option of initiating public policy discussions which must be taken into account by politicians.<ref>The Milton-Park Affair – Canada’s Largest Citizen-Developer Confrontation by Claire Helman, Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1987</ref>

Active with and promoting the World Social Forum, Dimitri Roussopoulos continues to advance the need for an Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in Canada. His major interest has been seeing democracy from the bottom-up developed within the perspective of the social ecology of ]. In February–March 2012, he founded in Athens, the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology, a network of intellectual/activists working in various cities in Europe.<ref>SodecM – Centre d’ecologie urbaine de Montreal, Rapport Annuel d’Activite,Montreal, 2004-2005</ref><ref>Le Chantier sur la Democratie de la Ville de Montreal, ville.montreal.qc.ca/chantierdemocratie</ref>


==Bibliography== ==Bibliography==

===English=== ===English===
* The Case for Participatory Democracy, co-edited with C.George Benello, 1970 * ''The Case for Participatory Democracy'', co-edited with C. George Benello, 1970
* The New Left in Canada, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1970 * ''The New Left in Canada'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1970
* The New Left – Legacy and Continuity, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2007 * ''Political Economy of the State – Canada, Quebec, United States'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973
* The Rise of Cities, edited by and written by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2012 * ''Canada and Radical Social Change'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973
* Faith in Faithlessness – an anthology of atheism, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2008 * ''Quebec and Radical Social Change'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1974
* Anarchist Papers, 2001; Anarchist Papers 2, 1989; Anarchist Papers 3, 1990 edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos * ''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 * ''1984 and After'', co-edited Marsha Hewitt, 1984
* Political Ecology; beyond environmentalism by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1993
⚫ * ''Coming of World War Three'', 1986
* Ecologie Politique by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1994, plus translations in Danish and Greek,
* Political Economy of the State – Canada, Quebec, USA edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973 * ''Radical Papers'', 1986, ''Radical Papers 2'', 1987, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos
* Canada and Radical Social Change, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1973 * ''Anarchist Papers'', 2001; ''Anarchist Papers 2'', 1989; ''Anarchist Papers 3'', 1990 edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos
* Dissidence – Essays against the Mainstream by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1992 * ''Dissidence – Essays against the Mainstream'', 1992
* ''Political Ecology; Beyond Environmentalism'', 1993
⚫ * Our Generation against Nuclear War, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1983
⚫ * ''Public Place – Citizen Participation in the Neighbourhood and the City'', 1999
⚫ * Coming of World War Three, by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1986
* Quebec and Radical Social Change, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1974 * ''The New Left – Legacy and Continuity'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2007
* Radical Papers, 1986, Radical Papers 2, 1987, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, * ''Faith in Faithlessness – An Anthology of Atheism'', edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 2008
* City and Radical Social Change, edited by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1982 * ''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
⚫ * Public Place – Citizen Participation in the Neighbourhood and the City by Dimitri Roussopoulos, 1999.
* The Rise of Cities, 2012


===French=== ===French===
*L’écologie politique – Au-delà de l’environnementalisme, 1994 *''L'écologie politique – Au-delà de l'environnementalisme'', 1994
*Au Bout de L’Impasse a Gauche – récits de vie militant et perspectives d’avenir, Baillargeon/Piotte, 2007 *''Au bout de l'Impasse à gauche – récits de vie militant et perspectives d'avenir'', 2007

==Further reading==
{{Refbegin}}

* 1968 Memories and Legacies of a Global Revolt, edited by Phillipp Gassert & Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. 2009
* Canada's 1960s by Bryan D. Palmer, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2009
* '']'', Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, 1988
* The Empire Within by Sean Mills, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2010
* ''Keeping to the Marketplace'' by John C.Bacher, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1993
* ''Left, Left, Left: Personal Account of Six Protest Campaigns, 1945–65'' by ], Allison & Busby, London, 1971, {{ISBN|0-85031-056-3}}
* The Milton-Park Affair – Canada’s Largest Citizen-Developer Confrontation by Claire Helman, Véhicule Press, Montreal, 1987
* Spying 101 – The RCMP's Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917–1997, Steve Hewitt, ], Toronto, 2002
* Saillant, Francois, Lutter pour un Toit, Ecosociete, 2018.

{{Refend}}

==See also==
* ]


==References== ==References==
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==External links== ==External links==
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* * {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200730055025/https://blackrosebooks.com/blogs/roussopoulos-dimitrios/2010/1/17/reflections-on-the-occasion-of-dimitri-roussopoulos-70th-birthday-and-public-intellectuals/37599 |date=July 30, 2020 }}

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Latest revision as of 11:46, 27 August 2024

Canadian activist and publisher (born 1936)

Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (born 1936) is a Canadian political activist and publisher.

Early life

Roussopoulos studied philosophy, politics, and economics at several Montreal and London 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. 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.

In 1969, Roussopoulos founded Black Rose Books, an international publishing house known for publishing works of left-wing politics by Noam Chomsky and Murray Bookchin, among others.

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, Roussopoulos founded Ecology Montreal Montréal Écologique 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. He later founded Société de développement communautaire de Montréal, which incorporated the Centre d'écologie urbaine de Montréal, alongside Place Publique, Groupe-ressource en éco-design, and Démocratie municipale et citoyenneté.

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 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 organize 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-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

Further reading

  • 1968 Memories and Legacies of a Global Revolt, edited by Phillipp Gassert & Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. 2009
  • Canada's 1960s by Bryan D. Palmer, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2009
  • The Canadian Encyclopedia, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, 1988
  • The Empire Within by Sean Mills, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2010
  • Keeping to the Marketplace by John C.Bacher, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1993
  • Left, Left, Left: Personal Account of Six Protest Campaigns, 1945–65 by Peggy Duff, Allison & Busby, London, 1971, ISBN 0-85031-056-3
  • The Milton-Park Affair – Canada’s Largest Citizen-Developer Confrontation by Claire Helman, Véhicule Press, Montreal, 1987
  • Spying 101 – The RCMP's Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917–1997, Steve Hewitt, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2002
  • Saillant, Francois, Lutter pour un Toit, Ecosociete, 2018.

See also

References

  1. Au Bout de L’Impasse a Gauche, Normand Baillargeon et Jean-Marc Piote, Editions Lux, Montreal, 2007.
  2. Campbell Windle, Victoria. "We of the New Left: A Gender History of the Student Union for Peace Action from the Anti-Nuclear Movement to Women's Liberation." PhD dissertation.
  3. McGillis, Ian (November 11, 2016). "Montreal's Expozine and Black Rose Books swim against the modern tide". Montreal Gazette. Archived from the original on December 12, 2016. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  4. ^ Bur, Justin, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Vallée Bernard, and Joshua Wolfe. 2017. Dictionnaire Historique Du Plateau Mont-Royal. Montréal, Québec: Écosociété. p. 355
  5. Harding, D. James (2024). The Long Sixties. Fernwood.
  6. "Black Rose Books  • Montreal Review of Books". Montreal Review of Books. Archived from the original on June 3, 2021. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  7. ^ (CCA), Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). "Milton-Parc: How We Did It". cca.qc.ca. Archived from the original on September 4, 2018. Retrieved July 8, 2020.
  8. Tarinski, Yvor. 2021. Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century. Montréal: Black Rose Books.
  9. Herland, Karen. 1992. People, Potholes, and City Politics. Montréal: Black Rose Books.
  10. "Ancien hôpital Royal Victoria – 9 – Opinions déposées à la commission". OCPM. November 17, 2021. Archived from the original on April 5, 2022. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  11. Kumar, Gayatri (May 1, 2012). "Profile: Dimitri Roussopoulos & Lucia Kowaluk". Archived from the original on April 18, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  12. "Launch of the Institut de politiques alternatives de Montréal". newswire.ca. Retrieved May 20, 2023.
  13. SodecM – Centre d'ecologie urbaine de Montreal, Rapport Annuel d'Activite,Montreal, 2004–2005
  14. Le Chantier sur la Democratie de la Ville de Montreal, ville.montreal.qc.ca/chantierdemocratie. Archived 2020-07-08 at the Wayback Machine.
  15. Antonopoulos, Thodoris (December 17, 2017). "An interview with Dimitri Roussopoulos: We Need to Stand Against "Green" Capitalism". Lifo. Archived from the original on January 25, 2018. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
  16. "Gouvernance". October 14, 2021.

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