ABSTRACT

A major barrier to social change from the bottom up is our tendency to go home after work and stay there. One recent evening, I called part of a list for a political/social get~ together, and 90 percent of the people answered their phones. This made life easier, but it set me to thinking about Mondragon, and San Sebastian, where for at least an hour or two a night, everyone was on the streets, chatting, gossiping, passing news, talking politics. The evening ritual is not peculiar to Basque country, but the intense intertwining of the social and the political is characteristic of the culture (Zubillaga 1987).