SONOMA, Calif.

DEMOCRACY from the bottom is evolving as a 10-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) gained over 1.5 million voters in the Nov. 23 elections. “It was a wonderful victory,” said Prof. Carmen Carrero, of the Communications Studies Department of the Bolivarian University, in Caracas. “We won 81 percent of the city mayor positions and 17 of 23 of the state governors,” Carrero reported.

The Bolivarian University is housed in the former Oil Ministry building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country.

Before the election of Chavez in 1998, college attendance was primarily for the rich. Today over 1.8 million students attend college, three times the rate 10 years ago. “Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,” reported Marlene Yadira Cordova, the university’s principal (president), in an interview with me Nov. 10. “We are a university where we have a vision of life that the oppressed people have a place on this planet,” declared Principal Cardova.

The enthusiasm for learning and thoughtful questions asked by students I experienced that day was certainly representative of a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The university offers a fully staffed free health-care clinic, zero tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared with the people.

Bottom-up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. “We establish the priority needs of our area,” reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the Bombilla area of western Caracas.

I interviewed Carmon while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station — one of 34 locally controlled community television stations and 400 radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. Community radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they call viewers/listeners “users” of media instead of the passive audiences.

Democratic socialism means health care, jobs, food and security in neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but intense poverty existed 10 years ago. With unemployment down to a U.S. level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increases in the price of food last year, local organizations offer government-subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat and powered milk at 30-50 percent off market prices. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a $1.6 billion budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses and personal emergencies.

“We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution, when the upper classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,” proclaimed Gallo Mora Witt, Ecuador’s minister of culture, at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in Caracas, on Nov. 7. Venezuela’s minister of culture, Hector Soto, added, “We try not to leave anyone out. . . . Before the revolution the elites published only 60-80 books a year; we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan authors this year. . . . The book will never stop being the important tool for cultural feelings.” In fact, some 25 million books — classics by Hugo and Cervantes along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush — were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils nationwide.

In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks, and nine of the 10 major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez. But despite the corporate media and continuing U.S.-taxpayer financial support of anti-Chavez opposition institutions from the Agency for International Development and National Endowment for Democracy ($20 million annually), two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support him and the United Socialist Party.

The democracies of South America realize that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are not working for the people and that new forms of resource allocation are necessary. It is a learning process for all involved and a democratic effort from the bottom up.

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored.