Study of a social movement in LosAngeles called Casa del Pueblo reveals the limitations of current theory on transnational social movements and advocacy networks. Whereas current theory tends to view the diffusion of political culture as a one-way process whereby Western ideas diffuse from the wealthier North to the Third World, Casa del Pueblo was born out of a transnational activist network created by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army-EZLN) in Mexico, a trailblazer of the global justice movement. Casa del Pueblo is a multiracial, largely Latino community group that organizes undocumented immigrants in Echo Park on a variety of issues. It borrows from the Zapatistas an expressive politics focused on consensus building and the active participation of all members and shares with them an emphasis on cultural and political autonomy. The record of Casa del Pueblo and similar transcultural movements in the United States and elsewhere suggests the need for a more interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to the study of transnational movements and advocacy networks.

This article examines the cultural politics of organizing in the Occupy LA movement. Utilizing ethnographic methods and the analysis of digital media sources produced by a variety of Occupy activists, this study focuses on how members of Occupy LA, in the post camp eviction period, made efforts to infuse a new kind of class politics among members of the newly and structurally dispossessed in the Los Angeles area.

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The EZLN is an indigenous, peasant‐based social movement and guerrilla organization located in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. It rose up in arms against the Mexican government and army on January 1, 1994, declaring its opposition to the Mexican government's incorporation into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the historical neglect of Mexico's indigenous peoples, and the lack of democracy within Mexico. The EZLN has roots in the National Liberation Front (FLN), a clandestine guerrilla movement with socialist principles that has its origins in the student protest movement of 1968. It is also influenced by indigenous, peasant, labor, and catechist organizations that emerged in Chiapas in the 1970s during a period of political awakening for indigenous people in the region.

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