This This is Jachabin Radio. I'm Susie Weiz,

I'm Susie Weiz, I'm wishing you all a good holiday season.

On today's program, we talked to Gabriel Hetland, who has just published his study of populist

experiments in Venezuela and Bolivia that showed the complexity of implementing participatory

democracy at the grassroots level.

His book, Democracy on the Ground,

examines the possibilities, limits, and concrete cases

of participatory democracy, including participatory budgeting at the local level during

the high point of Latin America's left turn in the 2010s.

His study immediately begs the question, what kind of democracy?

It's a pertinent question here in the United States where democracy is under threat by one of our two major parties.

We get Gabriel Hetland's views when our program returns in just a moment. We're also going to ask

for your support to keep this program and this station on the air. This is Jachab and Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman.

And today we're going to talk to Gabriel Hetland.

He's written a book called Democracy on the Ground, which immediately begs the question

what kind of democracy? Here in the United States, democracy is under threat. In fact, it's the

key question today, and it's under threat by one of our two main parties,

namely the Trumpist Republicans. But here we're fighting to maintain a very flawed democracy,

which we're finding out is still better than no democracy.

But for the left, the fight is to find as one for complete democracy or a genuine democracy

for a system in which the vast majority have meaningful participation in the decisions which affect our lives much more than simply voting every two or four years.

Gabriel Hetland spent nearly two years in both Venezuela and Bolivius,

...