Book excerpt: What began as a teachers strike demanding more resources for education, quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy. Despite the fierce repression that the movement faced, with hundreds arbitrarily detained, tortured, forced into hiding, or murdered by the state and federal forces and paramilitary death squads, people were determined to make their voices heard. A compilation of testimonies from longtime organizers, teachers, students, housewives, religious leaders, union members, schoolchildren, indigenous community activists, artists and journalists and many others who participated in what became the Popular Assembly of the People's of Oaxaca. From publisher description.