ABSTRACT
Protest square as a new global phenomenon came to stand as a hopeful process of changes from the Middle East to Europe. People have occupied the protest squares and public spaces with fearless resolve even in the face of violent authorization state-led backlashes. These protesters have exercised their power to re-articulate the connections between grassroots mobilization, institutional insurgencies, political struggle against the xenophobic, far-right, revanchist, authoritarian, racist, climate change denying groups across different countries. The insurgent cities are host to the inconvenient and contested process of unfolding the political crises of our time. In the following sections, after reviewing the theoretical framework, the recent examples of urban social movements, such as Take the Square, The Global Municipal Movement, and The Global Platform for the Right to the City (GPR2C), will be studied as examples of the global struggle to become democratic. The following chapters will focus on how social media platforms, televisions screens, international news channels, broadcasting, cinema, and other digital media have been essential agents in making social movement processes happen. This chapter will be built on various principles of insurgent urbanism and social movements in different world regions, focusing on the Global South through analytical and comparative perspectives. The final part will focus specifically on the protest movements under the social distancing during the recent COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to envision the post-COVID urbanism and radical futures.
